Andy Choy's Non Sequitur

Hollywood Box Office Trends

2007-07-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

I can't really understand why Hollywood isn't more concerned at the alarming rate at which movie life-spans are shrinking. Seems if you don't catch a movie the first week or two it comes out, you can't see it on the big screen at all. I've been meaning to see Spider-Man 3 but it hasn't been playing at a decent outlet in weeks even though it only came out in May. Even a movie like Transformers or Die Hard 4 is hard to find now.

I understand the argument that Hollywood now makes more money on DVD sales than theatrical release, but all things being equal, wouldn't the studios want to extend the time and amount of money they make from each channel of distribution? Whatever happened to a movie with "legs"?

The hard part is that I think the opening weekend numbers have become a signaling device that audiences assume correlates to how good a movie is. Anyone who has tried to sit through Miami Vice will attest that this method doesn't always work.

Worst TV Show EVER

2007-07-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

I was at the gym earlier this evening when I happened upon the worst TV show EVER! Seriously, this show should be banned. I'm absolutely certain this show has more negative and corrupting influence over kids than rap music or TV voilence ever will. So there's this show on MTV called My Super Sweet Sixteen or something similarly stupid. Basically, the entire show highlights these little spoiled brats getting these ridiculous sixteenth birthday parties. Who was the brains behind this one? Seriously, as bad as the show sounds, it's worse.

With crap like this on the air, I guess I can understand why Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are so popular....

Time Shares?

2007-07-12T11:19:00.001-07:00

I've had a few interactions with folks in the time share industry while working out here in Vegas. The cost of sales for a time share a ASTRONOMICAL. These guys pay top dollar on everything from free rooms to meals and entertainment to lure customers into hearing the sales pitch and ultimately buying a share. I would have thought that everybody is well aware that time shares are a horrible investment and moreover a complete rip-off. I mean, why else would anyone give you so much just to listen to the sales pitch? The profitability must be huge (which equals "RIP OFF"). Yet, time shares in Vegas are thriving! Who are you people buying these things?

Also, if you are going to listen to the sales pitch, you should try to demand much more than free show tickets. Some operators will actually give you as much as 2 nights accommodations with meals in addition to the show tickets just to sit through the time share presentation.

New 7 Wonders

2007-07-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

So the New 7 Wonders have been announced and they are:

Great Wall, China
Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
Machu Picchu, Peru
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
The Roman Colosseum, Italy
Petra, Jordan
Taj Mahal, India

I've been to the first five on this list but not the last two. Personally, this is not the list I would have chosen. Here's my list of the New 7 Wonders (which disqualifies the great pyramid of Giza since it's one of the original 7 wonders):

Great Wall, China
Machu Picchu, Peru
Chichen Itza, Mexico
Hagia Sophia, Turkey
Acropolis, Greece
Roman Forum, Italy
Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Of these sites, I've been to the first six. In looking over my choices, I realize that I have a bias toward ancient feats of engineering. The youngest structure on my list was built over 500 hundred years ago (Machu Picchu) and gets the nod for its unbelievable location. Perhaps it was the 3 day hike to get there but Machu Picchu is easily one of the most spectacular sites I've ever seen. Here's my list of runner-ups and why they didn't make the cut. Interestingly enough, I haven't been to any of these sites. Perhaps they'd make the cut if I actually saw them:

Close calls (spectacular, but not spectacular enough)
Petra, Jordan
Timbuktu, Mali
Bet Giorgis, Ethiopia
Golconda Fort, India
Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Too Recent:
Taj Mahal, India

Too Primative:
Stonehenge
Easter Island
Nazca Lines

Other:
Great Zimbabwe

Man, I'm getting itchy feet....

Importance of Industry on Job Satisfaction

2007-06-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've never placed too much emphasis on which industry to work in. I guess it comes from my ADD nature and knowledge that I'd eventually get bored with any industry I target. That being said, I think there are two very important considerations for selecting an industry.

First, you've got to have some core ability to succeed in your industry of choice. Unless you're a technophile or electrical engineer, working in high tech probably isn't the best choice for you.

Second, and more important, you've got to like the type of person who is also attracted to the industry. I never really thought about this aspect of job selection in the past but have come to appreciate it more lately. I've found that different industries attract different types of people. I think working an in industry where you like your peers really helps with job satisfaction, particularly for workaholics such as myself.

Agree? Disagree?

New Theory on Fertility Drug Usage

2007-06-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend about the prevalence of peers using fertility drugs or seeking invitro fertilization. I was quite frankly shocked that healthy, successful people in their early thirties are having difficulties conceiving. Her theory was that some of these over-achievers may simply be overly anxious and impatient about having a child. In thinking about it more, I think her theory makes more sense than anything I came up with.

So are you people just impatient or is there something else going on here which is adversely affecting fertility?

Jury Duty Awaits

2007-06-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering, if you don't respond to Jury Duty summons, they just send you another one. If you don't respond to the next two, then they get serious and send you a very threatening note informing you that you have one last chance to report to jury duty before they send the cops after you.

Who's Ringo?

2007-06-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Alright --

All this time I thought "Ringo" was my friend Tyler, but Tyler just left a few messages using his own name. So who are you "Ringo"?

Genius of Jack Welch

2007-06-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

I love what I've read about Jack Welch's management philosephies. He make a heck of a lot of sense with some pretty straightforward ideas such as the importance of candor within an organization. One of his lessor discussed tennants has to do with celebrating successess. Although he doesn't emphasize this pricipal too much, I have found it to be very important. Rather, I have experienced the consequences of failing to do so first hand.

The main drawback of not sufficiently celebrating successes is that it kills employee morale. I'm not talking about the promoting flowery, "Hey, isn't this a great place to work!" morale. I'm talking about avoiding the "That isn't my job!" mentality. When you don't celebrate success, there's no incentive for people to stick their neck out and put extra effort into their daily jobs. Sales people side with their customers on the margin. Marketing departments run promotions during peak times when their assured success, ironically when the marginal effect of marketing dollars is lower. Employees start leaving at the stroke of 5:00 PM. I wouldn't be surprised if expense accounts slowly creep up as well.

This problem can be very easily overcome by simply remembering to celebrate successes, no matter now small.

Elementary School Teachers

2007-06-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

A completely haphazard memory came to me this morning. I distinctly recall being repeatedly reprimanded as a child by my elementary school teachers for the same offense. Anyone who knows me can probably guess what that was.

I talked to much during class.

Even to this day I'm not quite sure why this was such a crime. I was undoubtedly bored out of my mind by the banal teachings in class. Additionally, the oratory and socialization skills I was developing have been FAR more valuable to me than any possible lesson about... to tell you the truth, I don't even remember what sort of crap they were trying to teach me in elementary school because I was too busy trying to talk to my friends during class! Interestingly enough, by the time I reached graduate school, these very traits I was chastised for became the basis for academic success.

Seems to me that there's a serious disconnect in our primary education system. The students just want to be engaged and the teachers just want to get through the day. Unfortunately, most students probably find playing and goofing off to be more engaging than the teachers' lesson plans.

For that matter, aside from indoctrination, why do school mandate certain works as "required" reading? Why is Shakespeare so important? Heck, it's not even written in modern English! If a kid wants to read Black Hawk Down or Moneyball (two of my favorite books) instead, why not let him or her? I'd argue that those two books are more relevant to today's world than some story about some murdering playboy and his little hoochie mamma (Romeo and Juliette).

That it, I'm home-schooling my children.

Pet Peeve of the Day

2007-05-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

What's up with people who have administrative assistants answer their phone but don't provide them with any information like when a better time to call back would be? If you're going to have someone answer you phone, at least equip them with some information. Why the heck don't you just have me roll straight into voice mail away?

Quote of the Day

2007-05-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

I love this quote:

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the paper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Click here to read the entire article. I find it ironic how this moron proves my point about the U.S. health care system being better than anywhere else.

My Plan for Universal Heath Care

2007-05-29T11:53:00.001-07:00

Rather than just come out with some half-baked idea about increasing income tax to the rich and forcing businesses to pay more medical coverage, I have an extremely actionable and inexpensive plan to provide for universal health care coverage.

Step 1: Tax the crap out of unhealthy behavior. Whatever the tax on on cigarettes and alcohol is, freakin' quadruple it. Institute a new tax on trans-fat or whatever it is in junk/fast-food that makes people obese. In fact, just institute a new tax based on body mass.

Step 2: Tax the crap out of polluting businesses, especially fossil fuel burning companies. I think government is missing out on a HUGE opportunity to both increase revenues and do something good for the environment by not taking action here. Pollution is a sizeable negative externality that government should try to curb. I cringe every time the news reports the number of deaths from a cold front and people rally for the government to subsidize heating oil costs. Why don't these people just wear more clothes in their homes? And where are all the Greenpeace folks then?

Step 3: Build more parks and playgrounds. Gym membership fees are outrageous. A little jog path with a few pull-up bars works just as well. We just need more of them.

Step 4: Ban American Idol. Is there a more effective way to get people off their couches and exercising more?

Step 5: Sponsor more beauty pageants. Feminists always talk about the evils of women with poor self-image and all the eating disorders the media causes. Simple solution here is to promote a healthier definition of beauty. A little government propaganda could go a far way here.

All kidding aside, I think the key here is for people to take more responsibility for their own health and stop thinking that government can effectively provide health care for the population. And before anyone points out that many other countries do in fact have universal health care, ask yourself this: If you were ill, which country would you go to seek treatment?

Unsolicited Resume Advice

2007-05-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've been noticing a strange trend lately. More often than not, I've been seeing resumes which are longer than one page. I'm not talking about full CVs that headhunters send which are understandably longer. I'm talking about good old-fashioned "hey, I'm responding to your job posting" resumes. I've always felt that the purpose of the resume is to get you an in-person (not on the phone) interview. The resume only needs to get the perspective employer interested enough to talk to you and doesn't need to list each and every merit badge you earned while in the Boy Scouts. As such, one page should suffice. And if you simply can't squeeze everything into one page, there's nothing wrong with 10 point font.

That being said, nothing will ever come close to matching the three-page resume I saw while working in Alabama last year that listed "skills" such as "The ability to hear a sound and discern from which location it came" and "The ability to see what is happening to one's side while one's eyes are focused forward." I'm not sure what's sadder: the guy's resume or the fact that I actually spent an hour interviewing him.

Best PR Person EVER

2007-05-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know whom he/she is or how much he/she gets paid but Lindsay Lohan's PR agent must be the most talented PR person on the planet. How else do you explain her being rated as #1 in Maxim magazine's Hot 100?

Why Jump Off a Building When You Can Enlist?

2007-05-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why people jump off buildings to kill themselves. It just seems like a horrible way to die. I'm not talking about the falling or even the landing but rather the senseless damage that will undoubtedly be done upon landing. Seeing as how most tall buildings are in urban areas that have some degree of pedestrian traffic, chances are pretty good that an innocent bystandard may be injured. Best case scenario still has the body landing on something else and still causing expensive damange.

Why don't people who want to die just enlist to serve in the military? Serving in the military might give some distraught people a feeling of purpose in life and a reason to live. The worst case scenario is that they die in combat and are no worse off than if they had committed suicide.

Just a thought....

Why I Love Sales Taxes

2007-05-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

There's no denying that government spending is sometimes a good thing (unless you're a anarchist, that is). While one can argue how much government should be spending, I don't think anyone (other than the aforementioned anarchists) will argue that we shouldn't have a government at all. That being said, governments need some way to raise money. There's really only one way a government can raise funds: taxation.

Side note: Some of you Public Finance guys out there might take issue with the statement above and say that governments can issue bonds to raise funds. While this might be true in the immediate term, eventually the governments will have to pay off the debt through some other means which comes back to taxation.

Side note 2: OK, I guess the government can also seize assets and sell them off to private individuals in order to raise money but that's not sustainable in the long term and detrimental to a well-functioning state.

Back to the story. With taxation being the only way to raise money, we're left with only two choices: taxing production or taxing consumption. As a firm believer in the free market, I abhor anything that inhibits the creation of value. Taxing production does exactly that. The tax reduces the incentive to produce. Taken to an extreme, there would be no incentive to make goods and provide services people want and shortages would abound (think Cuba -- more on this in the future). Income taxes are a form of production taxes since you pay according to how much wealth you earned.

On the other hand, sales taxes are consumption taxes. They collect funds on transactions that take away from the public good. Each time someone consumes an item, there is less of that item to go around. The more you consume, the more sales taxes you pay.

Many people think that sales taxes aren't fair because poor people can't afford to pay their proportional share of the tax burden. Sales taxes naturally adjust for this since wealthier people can consume more goods/services than the poor and as such would pay more in sales taxes. Wealthy individuals who don't consume goods/services aren't putting a strain on the system and as such shouldn't pay the same amount as those who consume more.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know!

Hedge Fund Bubble Alert!

2007-05-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

You know the bubble is about to burst when there's a website called "turnkeyhedgefunds.com"....

Notes from My Business School Reunion

2007-05-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in the Bay Area attending my business school 5 year reunion and came away with the following thoughts (in no particular order):

1. My classmates at Stanford aged very well. For the most part, everyone looked pretty much the way I remembered them looking. A handful of people had shorter or longer hair but for the most part just about everyone was instantly recognizable.
2. While there were a lot of people missing that I really wanted to see (I think turn-out was about 50% of the class), there were so many people in attendance whom I haven't seen in such a long time that it was easy not to focus on the missing people.
3. Evening events should always be indoors!
4. There was virtually no involvement from the faculty or staff at the reunion. I think it would have been nice if the Dean had attended and given a few words.
5. The event was far too short. I could have easily spent an entire week just hanging out with my classmates talking about work and life and such.
6. There are no changing tables in the men's bathroom in Arrillaga. What's up with that?
7. I was a bit surprised by the number of people who confided that they are having trouble conceiving a child. Most of my classmates are only in their early 30s, well-educated, wealthy, and in great physical shape. Just more data for my assertion that natural selection for humans may be dead (to be the subject for a posting some time in the future).
8. Although I spent only two years with these people and haven't seen many of them in 5 years, we were able to pick up old friendships very easily.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing all of my long term partners at the next GSB reunion!

Quick Thoughts on Immigration Rallies

2007-05-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

I don't have too much time this morning but wanted to jot down two thoughts about the immigration rallies yesterday. And for the record, I'm a HUGE proponent of increasing immigration and immigrant rights but I'll explain that some other time.

First, why on Earth do the protesters wave MEXICAN flags and wear red, white, and green? If they're trying to fight for immigrant rights, seems a lot more sensible to wave around an AMERICAN flag and wear red, white, and blue, doesn't it? Wouldn't they want to show their pride in being Americans and loyalty to the US?

Second, why do they demand rights? If I were one of the organizers of the rallies, I would demand to pay income taxes. What? That's right. Take the contrapositive position and instead of "No taxation without representation", shout out, "Representation with taxation!" Seriously, wouldn't the anti-immigrant movement look pretty stupid if they were against people who wanted to pay income taxes and be treated as equals?

Just two quick thoughts to start the morning....

Why Not Clean Up The Slums When You Can Tax?

2007-04-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

Read a very interesting (to me, at least) article this morning about de facto privitization of law and order in Brazil that disguised itself as "Vigilantes impose peace in Rio slums". I don't understand why politicians think they have a monopoly on public service or even if relying on government is the most effient means of providing public goods. One of these days I'll get around to writing some thoughts about public education.

Why Collect Tolls When You Can Tax?

2007-04-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

So I'm in the Bay Area this week and want to rant about the stupid bridge tolls. It's not the amount that annoys me but rather the inefficiency of the toll collection process. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about fee for usage as a more socially efficient means of paying for infrastructure. That being said, collecting tolls on the various bridges in the Bay Area is one of the biggest wastes of resources. Any one who has tried to cross one of the bridges during rush hour knows exactly what I'm talking about. Traffic gets backed up for miles just so the city can collect $4 per car. In this case, the cost (inefficiency) of collecting the direct usage fee is far greater than the alternative of collecting the revenues in a more indirect manner. My proposal would be to increase property taxes for homeowners in the Bay Area to offset the revenues lost by ending the bridge tolls. EVERYONE benefits from the bridges in some form or another and I'm willing to bet there's a pretty high correlation between price of home owned and usage of the bridge. In any case, the inefficiency of this indirect payment would be considerably less than the current inefficiency of everyone slowing down to pay the toll. I actually like property taxes a lot because it's one example of a progressive tax that is based on consupmtion and not production., but that's a topic for a different day....

Why Ban When You Can Tax?

2007-04-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

So all this talk about banning incandescent light bulbs in California is really annoying me. I can just see it now -- Californians making a run for the Nevada border to buy their fix of cheap light bulbs. A much easier and more efficient remedy is to simply levy a large tax on incandescent light bulbs. The revenues from this special tax could then be applied to subsidize the price of more expensive (but more efficient) florencent bulbs.

And in case you think this is crazy and without precedence, it's essentially what the cigarette tax does.

Proposal on Gun Control

2007-04-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've got a simple proposal to overt tragedies such as the Virginia Tech shootings: co-signing gun permits. While the waiting period and background checks mandated by the Brady Bill certainly make a lot of sense, I think we need more stringent measures to protect against first time felons such as Seung-Hui Cho. Just about everyone from his classmates to an escort he hired a week before the events knew this guy was "creepy". Even his own sister says he was a weirdo! It got me thinking if there is ANYBODY who is willing to vouch for this guy. Voila! Co-signing for gun permits.

Just like a loan, the co-signer would bear responsibility for the actions of the primary signer. Gun enthusiasts, hunters, and even people who want to own a firearm for personal protection should have no problem finding someone to co-sign their application. And if they can't find a friend or loved one to co-sign and accept responsibility for their actions, shouldn't that tell us something about the applicants' worthiness to own a means of death?

Of course, we could always just adopt Chris Rock's proposal and levy a HUGE tax on bullets....

Long Delay Explained

2007-04-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

I started blogging a few months ago in an effort to stay in touch with my friends better as my travel schedule was getting rather crazy. The blog really helped me keep in touch with one friend in particular, Wes Roberts. Wes was by far the most frequent reader of and commentator on my site. Many times, my postings would lead to a long e-mail chain back and forth. For those of you who don't know Wes, we were friends in college and worked together for 5 years. Much of our time at work was spent talking about the sort of things I write about. Sadly, Wes passed away a few weeks ago. Here's his obituary.

Wesley David Roberts passed away on March 23, 2007. He was born on January 12, 1977, beloved son of Renae and David Roberts. He attended Palos Verdes schools, beginning with Mira Catalina where his mother was and is a teacher. He was in the first class to go through four years at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, where he was active with Mock Trial, a member of the cross country team and Spanish Honor Society, and captain of the golf team. He belonged to Palos Verdes Assembly and was presented in 1995, the year he graduated. He received a BA from the University of California Berkeley in 1999, majoring in Economics, and was president of Chi Psi Fraternity. While attending Berkeley and after graduation he was an executive at Virco Manufacturing in Torrance. He received an MBA from the Marshall School at the University of Southern California in 2005 and was a law student at UC Hastings at the time of his passing. He had a heart of gold and was a pet lover, avid reader, hiker, traveler and Cal football fan.

Wesley is survived by his parents, Renae and David Roberts of Rancho Palos Verdes, his English bulldog, Bentley, his grandmothers Peggy Johnson and Delia Roberts, his grandfather Dale Johnson, and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins in the South Bay. He will be remembered with love by Katie Dye Roberts and her family in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Donations in his memory can be made to The Beacon House (1003 S. Beacon Street, San Pedro 90731) or the Peninsula Education Foundation (PO Box 2632, PVP 90274).

Success, Luck, and Survivorship Bias

2007-03-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a great deal recently about successful people and what made them successful. By "successful", I'm using an admittedly-narrow definition of financial success. I've never been comfortable relying on luck for my finanical well-being. I'll go so far as to say I have this illusion (delusion?) that a person's knowledge, skill, and hard work should trump luck in the long-run. Lately, I'm starting to doubt that. I'm starting to wonder just how big a role luck plays in determining one's success. Are the guys on the top of the Forbes list of riches Americans more lucky than good?

Certainly there are some very skilled people on that list, people who have created a great deal of value for society and their personal fortunes are a small fraction of that value creation. However, I'm starting to think that there is a lot of survivorship bias as well. Certain people were merely lucky and have accumulated vast amounts of money as a result. I starting thinking about exactly what made these individuals lucky. I think there is a two-part answer. First, the individual geniunely took a big risk and lightning struck. Then, success became a self-fulfilling prophesy as that person's deal-flow improved dramatically. With a solid financial backing, the individuals could afford to wait for the perfect deal. It's like having the bases loaded, a 3-0 count, and Barry Bonds batting behind you -- you sit and wait for a pitch you know you can hammer out of the park.

I think the lessons are:

Without great risk, there can be no great reward.
Maximize your opportunity-flow.
Patience is a good thing.
Don't be fooled into thinking all successful people are skillful.
Rich Aurilia really wasn't that good of a baseball player at all!

Personal Update

2007-03-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've got lots going on on the personal front. I think I've contacted most of you personally already. If not, drop me an e-mail and I'll bring you up to speed.

Worst Adverse Selection Problem EVER

2007-02-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

There's a theory in economics called "adverse selection" which basically states that if a deal is too good to be true, you'll get the wrong people signing up for it. The classic example used to illustrate this theory is insurance. Let's say you want to set up a very low cost car insurance policy but only for drivers who never get into accidents. Unfortunately, bad drivers are more likely to sign up since good drivers probably have cheap insurance anyhow. Another related economic theory is "moral hazard" which states that entering into a transaction changes behavior. In this case, having insurance actually causes people to drive more carelessly.

Anyhow, I was at the airport security line today when I noticed a piece of luggage with a Hedonism bag tag. For those of you who don't know, Hedonism is an adult-oriented all-inclusive vacation resort where people basically go to hook up with strangers. I quickly scanned the surrounding area to discern whose bag it was. The candidates were either a hippie woman in her late 40s who looked like the love-child of Sheryl Crow and a California Raisin or a sweet old grandmother in her 70s. I just assumed it was the hippie and thought to myself, "Adverse selection in action."

I started wondering if there's also moral hazard at work at Hedonism. Do people just lower their standards and really just start hooking up with strangers they normally wouldn't? As I was thinking about this, I saw the Sheryl Crow/California Raisin woman walking to the gates without the Hedonism bag! I guess there's some fire left in grandma after all!

Vegas Myths

2007-02-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

I've been getting a lot of questions about casino operations from my friends. Here's the top few questions and their answers.

Q. Is it true the carpet is intentionaly ugly so that people have to look up at the slot machines?
A. No. The carpet is intentionally ugly to hide drink stains and heavy traffic.

Q. Architects make casinos difficult to exit on purpose to keep people on property, don't they?
A. Not really. The main reason casinos are so confusing is that most of them have evolved over many years. Building a casino is VERY capital intensive and as such most companies are stretched as thinly as possible when the facility opens. After a few years, the casino has some success and money to expand. The architects then squeeze the new amenity into whatever space is available and try to integrate it into the old structure which causes the confusing layout.

Q. Is there really a back room where they rough up cheaters?
A. No. Liability is too high to rough up "advantaged players" (the euphamism for card counters). Actual theives are turned over the police department. Casinos make a special effort to keep very good relationships with the local police departments.

Q. Do casinos really pump oxygen into the building to keep people awake and playing more?
A. No. Costs too much.

Q. Are there really cameras watching everything?
A. Yes. Every square inch with the exception of bathrooms and guestrooms can be monitored from a central location. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a camera on me in my office right now. Not kidding.

Q. Do casinos give away free drinks to get people drunk so that they'll gamble more?
A. Um, why else would they give away drinks?

Q. Does the mob run Vegas?
A. Not anymore. There are some stories the old timers tell about the mob but that's been gone for well over 4 or 5 years now....

Q. How do they make money on the buffet?
A. A surprisingly large component of a restaurant bill is the labor portion. Buffets essentially limit the direct labor costs.

Q. What's the best bet in the casino?
A. Backing odds on craps and 100% video poker payback machines.

Q. What? There are video poker machines that guarantee over 100% payback?
A. Yes. However, the player must play PERFECT strategy which is very difficult to do.

Q. Can casinos set the odds on the slot machines?
A. Technically, I don't believe you can set the odds but you can manipulate the payout.

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. If you have any casino questions, e-mail them to me and I'll try to answer them if the information isn't proprietary.

Vegas - LA Commute

2007-02-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

It's official. Door to door, I can drive back to LA from Vegas in the same amount of time it takes to fly. The main reasons include:

1. Taxi line at LAX being ridiculously slow
2. Inefficient airline check-in procedures post-9/11
3. Poor design of Vegas airport terminals
4. Air traffic out of Vegas airport
5. Oft-delayed flights out of Vegas
6. Lack of traffic flowing from Vegas to LA on a Friday night

I wish they'd finally builld that bullet train from LA to Vegas I've been hearing about since I was a kid....

Coolest Vegas Website

2007-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't a plug for the company I'm currently working for. Sadly, our website is very pedestrian. If you have a minute, check out the website for the MGM Grand. Although it may take a little while to load the first time, this website is easily the coolest one around. A colleague of mine who is in advertising estimates the production costs alone to be north of $2 million!

Wanted: Fantasy Baseball Participants

2007-02-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

With Spring Training just around the corner, it's time to gather up player for Fantasy Baseball! Let me know if any of you are interested in joining the league I've been in for the past 3 years and I'll send you the details. The buy-in is very low (like $40 or so) and it's basically for bragging rights more than anything else.

SWA Strategies

2007-01-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

I hate Southwest Airlines. In the past 15 years, I've probably taken 300 flights on Southwest. I have had the Companion Pass (which allows a person you designate to fly with you free on any Southwest flight for a year) 3 separate years. Now that I'm commuting between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, I'm forced once again to fly Southwest. Over the years, I've come up with several strategies for dealing with flying on Southwest which I'll share with all of you.

Check in online 24 hours in advance. You MUST do this so that you get to board in the A priority line. Failure to do so almost always guarantees a middle seat between two very large and smelly people.
Don't just take the first available aisle seat. Go down a few rows because there are always people who just HAVE to sit in the first few rows even if it means sitting in the middle seat instead of going to the back where it's half empty.
If the window seat is open, look for a fat guy coming down the aisle and try to intice him to sit in your row.
Put a bunch of papers and clothes on the middle seat.
Remove your shoes. For full effect, remove your socks as well. Cross your legs and have your foot dangling on the middle seat. While not exactly barging an extra seat, most people would rather sit next to the tattoo and dreadlock guy than your smelly foot.
Take a tissue out and blow your noise constantly.
Clutch a barf bang.
If someone still insists on taking the middle seat next to you, fumble around clumsily until the person finally just gives up and moves on.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know....

Government Regulation Done Right

2007-01-25T18:38:00.000-08:00

California just banned a toxic solvent commonly used in dry cleaning called perchloroethylene. The ban is to take effect by 2023 with some intermediary steps in between. Apparently, some people against the ban say that it will be harmful to small business owners who can't afford the more-expensive non-toxic alternative. This argument is just wrong. This regulation effects everyone in the industry and as such the entire supply curve will shift together, maintaining the relative positioning of everyone in the market. While dry cleaners may need to purchase new equipment, the fact that nearly every player in the industry faces this requirement means the costs can easily be passed to the customer. Since there is no real alternative to dry cleaning, demand shouldn't change. The bottom line is no dry cleaner should suffer as a result of this new regulation and everyone gains from the elimination of the toxic chemical.

The only people who should be upset are those who do a lot of dry cleaning. However, more expensive dry cleaning is basically a consumption tax and I'm all for consumption taxes, even when it hurts me personally. That being said, I'm already using a dry cleaner who uses the non-toxic stuff and I didn't need to watch Al Gore's propoganda to convince me to do so!

Thoughts on Successful Businesses

2007-01-25T15:04:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, I've been thinking about a concise definition (or indicator) of successful businesses and I think I've narrowed the list down to two:

Successful Business, noun:

an entity that has the ability to charge its customers a premium to comparable goods or services for no apparent reason.
an entity that changes the way a vast majority of people live their lives.

The first definition includes companies such as Evian and Starbucks. It excludes fashion companies with no functional differences but discernable stylistic ones such as BMW, Mercedes, Nike, and so on. The key is to be able to charge more for the same amount of effort/value-add. Fashion companies arguably spend a great deal on superior branding and product development which warrent the premium. This definition acknowledges those companies who are able to get more for nothing.

The second definiton applies to companies such as Ford, RCA, and McDonnald's who respectively changed where people lived, what they did in their leisure time, and how quickly they ate their meals. These companies had an incredible amount of impact on the lives of many, many people.

Admittedly, my examples for the first definition are weak and the ones for the second definition are old. If you can think of any companies that fit my description or if you have a beter definition, please let me know.

Roulette Strategery

2007-01-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

So I was in the elevator this morning when I overheard some guy trying to teach these two strangers what I can only describe as "Roulette Strategery". This idiot actually believed he had a "system" for beating roulette! He told the couple, "Just watch the numbers and when you see that 0 and 00 haven't come up in a while, bet both of those numbers. I guarantee O or OO will come up."

I wanted to ask the guy if he was one of the secret marketing employees some casinos hire to empart bad gambling advice to strangers. Just kidding, by the way.

Hurray for the Democrats!

2007-01-18T18:01:00.000-08:00

I just read a news article about rolling back the oil subsidies. As a firm believer in free market economics, I applaud any effort to reduce subsidies. Now some people may say that this measure will increase the price of gasoline to the consumer. While this statement is probably true, what the critics seem to be forgetting is that removing the subsidy should refund even more than that amount back to tax payers (subsidy amount plus administrative cost of running the subsidy). The winners should be the people in the highest tax bracket (who should get a disproportional share of the tax refund since they paid a disproportional share of the original taxes that provided the subsidy) and people who don't use a lot of gas. For full disclaimer, I'm currently in the latter category and hope to be in the former category one of these days. All this being said, I doubt the Democrats are going to issue tax refunds with the savings but that's a different argument altogether.

Oh yeah, the environmentalist in all of us also wins.

In general, I against government subsidies when there's no reason to believe a free market wouldn't provide effient results (click here to read my thoughts on stem cell research). Stay tuned for my blasting of, and subsequent support for, "free" public education....

Chappell Defending W's Iraq Strategery

2007-01-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well, sort of. You decide....

Musings on The Price is Right

2007-01-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

One of the TVs in the employee dining room had on The Price is Right this morning. One nuance of the show is that you get heavily penalized for overestimating the price of items. For example, you can't get passed the initial round or win the final showcase showdown if you've guessed over the actual retail value. I started wondering why they had this rule.

My first thought was to avoid a tie. If the value is $2 and one person guesses $1 and the other guesses $3, they'd both be off by exactly $1. However, this situation would be very rare and they could just stipulate that the in the event of a tie, the contestant with the lower (or higher) guess would be declared the winner.

My next thought has to do with anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Basically, if players have incentive to underestimate the value of the prizes, they will always be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. You wouldn't want someone guessing his or her final showcase is valued at $25,000 to then "win" a prize valued at only $10,000. It makes the prizes seem bigger and better than they are.

This theory seemed plausable enough and I couldn't find any holes in the logic, so I stopped considering other options and starting thinking about why the heck Bob Barker hasn't retired already....

Who is Obama?

2007-01-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

Can somebody tell me why Barack Obama is so popular? It's not that I dislike the guy; it's that I don't even know what he's all about and have yet to meet anyone who does. From what I can tell, he's popular because people say he's popular. So please, if you're an Obama fan, let me know why.

Random Vegas Airport Newsstand Thought

2007-01-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

So I'm at the Vegas airport last Friday night after a VERY long week at work. I just finished with the book I had been reading and was looking for a magazine for the flight home when it suddenly dawned on me: Someone should come out with a nuddie magazine with a non-descript name and cover. I spend an awful lot of time in airport newsstands and from the plethora of choices, I can only assume that nuddie magazines are good business. That being said, I'd bet there are a lot of people who would buy the occasional porn mag but are too embarrassed by the magazine names and cover images to do so. Why not publish a magazine that has a serious-looking cover and name (e.g. "Asset Review") to capture this market?

Football in Los Angeles

2007-01-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Who says there's no football in LA? Does anyone want to go to a LA Galaxy game this year?

Details are still coming in but from what I've seen, it looks like Beckham's contract dwarfs A-Rod's deal: $250 million for 5 years. That's almost money than the average hedge fund manager makes!

And in case you didn't read the fine print, I think the most interesting detail is identity of the man who put the deal together: Simon Fuller.

Better Than White Castle!

2007-01-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

In case I negelected to tell you, I'm now working in a Las Vegas casino. All casinos apparently have employee dining rooms where the employees can eat for free. From what I hear tell, the food is actually very good at most of these places. I can only speak to the dining room here and it is indeed quite good.

So I went in this morning to grab some breakfast and lo and behold they had steamed BBQ pork buns! Good thing my friend Jenkins doesn't work here or else there may have been a brawl in the dining room.

They had started setting up for lunch and they had some baked salmon I'm going to be thinking about for the next 2 hours or so....

Where did THAT month go?

2007-01-03T16:38:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't guessed, I've been COMPLETELY swamped! The brief update is that I'm now working in Vegas 5 days a week. Drop me a line if you're going to be in town!

Federally Funded Stem Cell Research

2006-11-21T19:13:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why people want the federal government to fund stem cell research. Some people are against federally-funded stem cell research for moral or religious reasons. I won't even get into that. I'm against it because I think it's a waste of tax-payer money. That's right, an absolute waste. Why? Because stem cell research is so promising.

What?

Stem cell research has the potential to cure so many different diseases that pharmaceutical companies stand to reap a windfall from any significant discoveries. As such, there is clearly incentive and motivation for these companies to invest in research into stem cells with or without federal funds. Why should tax-payers foot the bill for the research that big pharma companies are willing to fund on their own?

Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality

2006-11-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

So I woke up this morning thinking about life expectancy and infant mortality because, well, I'm a dork and that's the sort of stuff I think about first thing in the morning. Actually, I'm currently in the middle of reorganizing my office/library/guestroom and trying to recall a little factoid I read a while ago. I found it on page 139 of How We Know What Isn't So.

Many people are surprised to learn that relatively little of the
improvement in health and longevity during the last two hundred years is due to
drug and surgical treatment of sick individuals. Most of the gain is
attributable to various preventive measures such as improved sewage disposal,
water purification, the pasteurization of milk, and improved diets. In
fact, our greater longevity is mainly due to our increased chances of surviving
childhood, chances increased by these very preventive measures and by the
introduction of vaccines for the infectious diseases of youth. The life
expectancy of those who make it to adulthood has not changed much during the
last hundred years. The life expectancy of a 45-year-old man in the
nineteenth century was roughly 70 years, a figure not much different from that
of today.

I would have never independently come up with decreased infant mortality as the primary driver for increased life expectancy, but after hearing the postulate, it's impossible to forget. This factoid is one of the most counter-intuitive and surprising things I've read in a long time. If any of you have a similar interesting factoid, please share it with me!

Advice Needed from my Stanford Classmates

2006-11-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

What should I do with all of my business school documents? I've got 4 boxes full of business school cases, presentations, and notes that I haven't looked at in years. I don't really want to throw it out but it is taking up a lot of room in my condo. I was thinking of buying a sheet-fed scanner and just scanning everything to PDF files but that seems like such a waste of time. What have you guys done with all that stuff?

More Celebrity Sightings!

2006-11-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

I'm still stuck in the VH-1 80s special. On my flight back to LAX from JFK yesterday, I was sitting behind none other than Tony Danza! Of course I didn't realize it was him until we were both walking through LAX and a fan shouted, "Hey look, it's Tony Danza!" For some strange reason, he shouted back, "Hey look, it's a moron!" I thought he was kidding but kept pace and eavesdropped on his conversation with his travel companion and turns out (a) it really was Tony Danza and (b) he wasn't kidding. Jerk.

Problem with Amazon.com

2006-11-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

I love amazon.com. I probably spend about $1,000 a year on amazon, not couting big ticket purchases like fancy camera lenses. However, I HATE the so-called personalized recommendations. From what I can tell, they basically take the last 3 books you bought and pick titles that sound like it. For example, I bought the Rosetta Stone CD-ROMs for Mandarin. One of the suggestions that popped up is for the Rosetta Stone Japanese package. HOW MANY FREAKIN' LANGUAGES DOES AMAZON THINK I'M TRYING TO LEARN AT ONE TIME?!?!?

Also, I have read every book written by Mark Bowden and believe I have bought all of them through amazon.com. Same thing with Michael Lewis (except that sappy "Coach" book he came out with last year). Wouldn't you think I'd like to know when one of those guys publishes a new book? Turns out Michael Lewis does have a new book out. I found out the other night while shopping at Barnes and Noble. And why don't the recommendations come right up on the home page. Who cares about kitchenware? Considering I've cooked 2 meals in the past year, certainly not I. (That being said, I really do like cooking but don't have the time anymore with my new job.)

Amazon should just go out and buy NetFlix and incorporate their recommendation algorithm. The more I think about it, the more that combination makes sense. Maybe for a fixed fee each month, you can have a book mailed to you. After you're done with it, you mail it back. I mean, who rereads books anyways? Certainly not me.

Rumsfeld's Only Mistake

2006-11-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

Now I know many people are thinking, "What do you mean ONLY? There were so many!" I'm not going to argue how many mistakes Rumsfeld made but I will say there is one decision that would have dramatically changed how Rumsfeld is viewed today.

Before I get started, let me offer a caveat. I'm by no means an expert on Iraq, politics, the White House, military doctrine or anything else beside perhaps digitally editing movie posters to add my friends faces. I've never even watch a full episode of the Daily Show or The O'Reilly Factor. However, I've probably read over 20 books on those subjects over the past 5 years. Without further adeau here are my thoughts on Rumsfeld.

First, I'd like to congratulate Rumsfeld on what I think was his biggest accomplishment: one that I believe is widely overlooked and will truly change the world forever -- transformation. Can anyone even tell me what transformation is? Basically, transformation is a military strategy that says a tiny force (by military standards) can accomplish a great deal. Iraq is perhaps the greatest military victory in modern warfare. Basically, a force of 150,000 or so defeated a force of over 1 million. (Editor's note: Pizarro's 200 conquistadors defeat of 80,000 Incas is probably the greatest military victory of all time). I believe the success of the traditional war in Iraq is the biggest event in military history since the two atomic bombs ended World War II.

Which leads us to the mistake: the debaathification of Iraq. For those of you who don't know, the Baathist Party was Saddam Hussein's ruling political party. Put crudely, the Nazi party was to Hitler what the Baath Party is to Hussein (or as some might say, the Republican party is to George W. Bush). Anyhow, almost everyone with any sort of power in Iraq was in the Baath party. I bet a lot of them didn't even like Hussein but had to be in the party in order to get ahead in life. All of these people were prohibited from participating in the new government and many of them suddenly became blacklisted from everything. So what you have is a bunch of formerlly educated, rich, and powerful people now with nothing to do but form insurgencies. While I do believe that many insurgents are punks and thugs, there are bound to be many, MANY formerly-respectable people who joined the Baath party for pragmatic reasons who are now part of the insurgency. This situation should have been foreseen and is absolutely inexcuseable.

As all of you readers know, I'm about as pro-USA as they come. That doesn't mean I support every US policy blindly and naively. I'm glad Rumsfeld resigned and I'm glad he didn't do it BEFORE the election. While I generally vote Republican, separation of power is a good thing. Now how do we get McCain-Lieberman elected in 2008?

Celebrity Sightings

2006-11-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

I generally don't run into too many celebrities but Sunday was quite the exception. I was in the security screening line at LAX when I spotted a lanky guy with long curly hair who looked like a recording superstar but I wasn't sure. I spent the next few minutes trying to read his bording pass and drivers license to no avail when suddenly, another guy approached him and said, "Thanks for being on my show this weekend!" Growing up in Los Angeles in the 80s, I recognized the voice immediately. It was none other than Mr. Disco Duck himself, Rick Dees. That pretty much confirmed the first guy was in fact who I thought it was: Weird Al Yankovic.

If that wasn't Weird enough, I ran into Angela Lansbury in the lobby of my hotel! I felt like I was in some VH1 special about the 80s.

Open Letter to My Male Single Friends

2006-11-01T06:08:00.000-08:00

Dear [name of male single friend] --

The fact that I'm now married doesn't mean I'm willing to jump on your grenades. Yes, the married guy makes the perfect wing man (nothing to gain = nothing to lose and fearlessness is generally considered to be the single most important attribute for a wing man) but that logic only works if you need help meeting the girl in the first place. If you have known her for a few years and know that she's got a terribly boring roommate, for heaven's sake don't be bringing the boring roommate out to dinner with us! For that matter, don't be bringing the girl you're interested in if you know I'm not bringing my wife! Look, I'm a dork. I realize this. I like spending my free time talking about business and politics and sports. If I've invited out to dinner, unless we were in the same fraternity in college, chances are I'm going to want to discuss these topics, not make small talk with girls I have nothing in common with. Do you know any girl who would be interested in talking about those things? You do? Fine. Marry her and start jumping on your own damn grenades!

I'm back!

2006-11-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

I'm back -- both literally and literarily. Seems I've accomplished what I sent out to do in Shanghai and now I'm awaiting my next assignment. I spent my last few days in Shanghai packing up the apartment and shipping everything back. Of course, I made the obligatory stop by my favorite DVD store and went nuts. The guy at the store saw me eyeing the Oscar box set which had every best picture ever for US$100. I'm still not 100% convinced these aren't illegal copies (wink, wink) so I decided to limit myself to bringing in 80 discs which meant no Oscar Party. I decided to pick up every epidsode of South Park instead.

I was able to order lunch unassisted yesterday which was the first time I've been able to do so in about a month. It's the small things in life you miss the most. After a 3 week camping trip in Nambia I took back in 2004, I was quite surprised that what I missed the most was flipping on a light switch.

I'll try to post a few more thoughts in the next few days as a lot of weird stuff has happened to me in the last few days. Heck, I could write for days just about my cousin's eccentric wedding last weekend! Stay tuned....

littleMAN onlineSTORE betaLAUNCH

2006-10-24T01:57:00.000-07:00

I think Tracy's online store finally ready! Well, at least for beta testing to friends and family. Click here to access the store and receive 20% off your entire order. Let me know what you guys think even if you don't buy anything!

The Second Amendment

2006-10-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

I was walking to work this morning thinking about the Tienamen Square incident and thinking how strange it was that everything just kind of went back to normal after that. It was as though the government basically said, "OK, everyone run along and go home now" and then proceeded to spray the crowd with bullets for good measure to make sure everyone obeyed. How the heck did the government stay in power? How did people just stand for that? Why didn't it spark mass protests and riots and civil unrest until either the government was toppled (Batista in Cuba) or forced to reform (Johnson in the 60s)?

Unfortuantely, I think the answer is guns. As much as I deplore guns and applaud gun control measure such as the Brady Bill, I think the Founding Fathers were wise to include the Second Amendment. It's the ultimate check and ballance against the government.

Stuff from Last Weekend

2006-10-23T00:54:00.000-07:00

I never got around to writing up all of the adventures I had last weekend as I had promised so let me try to catch up:

There's a new club on the Bund in Shanghai called "Attica". I got invited to the "soft opening" last Friday night. The location and decor were absolutely beautiful. I have no idea how that place is going to make any money. The capacity of the club must be over 2,000 people and I wonder how many people in Shanghai can afford $15 drinks. Then again, the night I was there, most of the crowd looked like they had just flown in from St. Tropez. I don't think I've seen so few Chinese people in one place since my time in Abbeville, Alabama earlier this year. And apparently, if you just sit down at a table marked "RESERVED" and one of your friends proceeds to cop huge attitude, the waiters will leave you alone.

If you know the right place to go, getting custom-tailored clothing in China is cheaper than getting your shirts laundered 3 times at the Marriott. Here's a pointer: if you're coming to Shanghai and want to have a suit made, I'd bring some classy buttons from the US.

On Saturday afternoon, Tracy and I went to a newly-opened traditional Chinese massage place and each got 2 hour massages. Total cost for both of us: $22.

Unless you're really REALLY into Sim City, go ahead and skip the Urban Planning museum. While it's cool to think that the government has master-planned the future development of Shanghai 10 years in advance, one trip to Pudong very quickly deflates that myth. In the mid-90s, Pudong was a huge rice patty across the river from the historic Bund. One would think that with so much undeveloped land so close to so many people, the government could have done something really cool like developing mixed-use buildings set along pedestrian walkways and loads of public transportation. Today, it's nothing but urban sprawl. They should have turned the entire development over to Disney or Intrawest.

One of the most popular (and certainly most crowded) places in town is an area restored to 17th-century Chinese charm known as the Yu Gardens. It's an area of about 3 city blocks filled with souvenir stores and restaurants. It's packed with tourists and shovey Chinese people hawking loogies everywhere. For clarity, the area just OUTSIDE of the Yu Gardens is crowded. To get into the actual Yu Gardens, you need to pay 40 RMB (about $5). The $5 is a big enough deterrent to change the density of "annoying person spitting and shoving you per 100 square feet" from about 87 down to 0.04.

Chinese Mario Andrette

2006-10-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

I love Type II errors. As a stat major in college, the difference between Type I errors (false positive) and Type II errors (false negative) was drilled into my head. I think I learn more from analyzing Type II errors than Type I. Additionally, I love making Type II errors because they can be summarized as, "Thought I was wrong, but it turns out I was right!"

Anyhow, at the end of my weekend in Xi'an, I met the Chinese Mario Andrette. Turns out he's working as a taxicab driver in Xi'an. We flagged him down at the South Gate of the old Xi'an city walls and wanted him to take us to the hotel to pick up our bags. We were originally going to switch cabs at that point but this guy was so awesome we asked him to wait for us which he was more than happy to do (airport is an hour away from town and a BIG fare for them). In the trip from the city walls to the hotel and then on to the airport, ONE car passed us the ENTIRE trip. What was most impressive about this feat is that the guy never accelerated nor braked hard. I don't think he ever got the car over about 65 miles per hour. He was just very skilled at sneaking the car into the smallest nook and cranny to get buy everybody. At one point, two lanes were merging at a freeway turning circle. He slowed down to yield to the other car. I thought something must be wrong and certainly it was. He looked ahead and noticed a traffic jam so he put the car into reverse and backed it up about 10 feet back into the turning circle and took a different turn!

So what does this have to do with Type II errors? Well, you know every time you drive and get into a hairy situation like trying to pass a big rig and think to youself, "No, I'm not going to make it. I better not do that." This taxi driver demonstrated to me that it turns out more often than not, you do make it!

Weekend in Xi'an

2006-10-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Spent this past weekend in Xi'an checking out the Terracotta Warriors and the various other sites of Xi'an, the ancient capital of China. China is making a LOT of investments on tourism in preparation for the Beijing '08 Olympics. Almost everything in Xi'an was either ancient (City Walls, Bell Tower, etc.) or brand-spanking new (airport). The best example of this contrast was the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a Buddhist temple originally built in 652. Just outside of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is a modern shopping mall with Vegas-style fountains which looks to have been built in the last 2 years or so. Outside of the Terracotta Warriors complex is another shopping mall of over 500 storefronts which is scheduled to be opened next year. I haven't been to Beijing since early 2003 and the infamous "Ritchie Oriol Peking Duck" incident but I can only image what sort of construction is going on there.

Viewing the Terracotta Warriors and learning more about Emperor Qin got me thinking about timeframe and big projects. It took Emperor Qin 9 years to unify China. In doing so, he unified the writing system, units of measure, and rule of law among other things. That's pretty fast, if you ask me. Think back to 1997. How much have you accomplished in 9 years?

Lost in Translation or Who is this Lunatic?!?!?

2006-10-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

I was at a Huntsman customer conference this past week and had the misfortune of listening to the idiotic ramblings of Professor Larry Lang. Or rather, I was listening to the horrible translation of Professor Larry Lang. While most of the audience understood Mandarin, the conference attracted attendees from all over Asia and many did not. The fine folks at Huntsman provided headsets connected wirelessly to translators sitting in the back of the room. Anyhow, either the translators were REALLY bad or Larry Lang is a raving lunatic who's alleged PhD in Finance from Wharton should be revoked. At a minimum, he should be put on a long sabbatical from his professorship at Chinese University in Hong Kong lest some student actually listen to his lunacy and believe him. From what I was able to gather, "Professor" Lang was actually advocating a fixed exchange rate between the Chinese Yuan and the U.S. Dollar! His rational for this was that the Chinese government wasn't savvy enough to have a floating currency and that George Soros would come in and break the Chinese currency. He also had some strange conspiracy theories about the U.S. wanting to somehow cheat the Chinese by manipulating exchange rates. I forget his exact words but it was something like, "Look what happened to the Japanese! They bought Rockerfeller Center and the Americans got all mad and made them float their currency and a few weeks later Japan had to sell it back for a huge loss!" I was speachless.

Someone from the audience asked him about the long term risks of a pegged currency. He replied, "Good question but if you want to talk about risks, think about what a floating exchange rate would mean. Today the RMB is up 5%, tomorrow it's down 2%, the next day it's back up 3%. That's risk! Next question."

I don't really understand Macro Economics as well as say Bayesian Statistics and Markov Chains (which just sound fancy but are quite simple). However, I know enough Macro to know that fixed exchange rates are next to impossible to do successfully. Pegging a currency is like keeping up with the Joneses. Unless you have the exact same financial situation and utility functions (akin to going to full dollarization as Panama has), it's better to let your currency float. Then again, I actually believe in nonsense such as market efficiency and free markets.

The On Deck Circle

2006-10-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

It was an absolutely beautiful weekend in Shanghai with highs in the mid 70s and lows in the mid 60s. I don't have the time to blog about everything now, but here are some of the highlights from the weekend that I'll write about in the next few days:

The hottest club in town

Shopping for custom tailored clothes

Best $11 I spent this weekend

Urban planning museum

Best $5 I spent this weekend

More Thoughts on the Nobel Prize

2006-10-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

So do you think the other Nobel Prize winners make fun of the guy/gal who wins the one for Literature? I mean seriously! The Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics winners struggle in labs for years. The Econ winners sit around all day long thinking really hard about explaining how people think and act (Come to think of it, the Econ winner is strange. Sometimes it leans toward Mathematics and other times Sociology, two very different disciplines). The Peace winners more than likely have risked their lives countless times and been imprisioned and tortured and stuff. And these winners get equal billing with someone who hangs out all day long at a Starbucks all day long sucking down frappaccinos while typing away on his PowerBook? What's up with that?

I Stink

2006-10-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

Quite seriously, I do! Yesterday, I got this strange bug bite on my thigh just above my knee which I'm apparently very allergic to. The welt has swollen to about the size of my knee cap, coincidentally. The antihistimine medication they have here in China is called Tiger Balm. You can find it in just about any Chinatown in the US. The stuff works great and has this nice numbing feature to it. The only problem is it stinks. I smell like I've been rolling around in a eucalyptus grove, sucking on Halls menthol lozenges, smoking a pack of Salems or Kools, and rubbing Vick's Vapor Rub all over myself. I wonder what the heck my American colleagues were thinking this morning during our breakfast meeting.

Serious (and Short) North Korea Questions

2006-10-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

Can someone briefly explain to me why North Korea want to have one-on-one talks with the US? From everything I've read, it seems like they just want the US to give them money to stop trying to make a nuclear bomb.

While we're on the subject, why is it so hard to make nuclear bombs? The US had them over 60 years ago! What's wrong with these two-bit third-world dictators anyhow?

The Solution to Globalization

2006-10-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

It was recently a "Golden Week" here in China which is one of two week-long holidays created about 7 years ago by the government to spur domestic spending. Seems a problem China has is that consumer spending isn't high enough to fuel the growth rate the government would like to sustain. I heard one account that consumer spending went up 14% during that week. It's a rather strange holiday system as it's technically only 3 working days off but almost every business shuts down for 5 days, forcing workers to use up their flex time.

I've got another solution for the Chinese government to consider: they should buy the US! A good old fashioned LBO of the US and it's consumer-oriented economy would provide more than enough markets for Chinese goods. Given the Chinese peg to the US dollar and the huge trade deficit, it's in essence what's going on anyways.

It's rather ironic that China is looking for markets to sell their goods. I remember in 8th grade World History the factoid that back in the 1800s, the British were salivating that if every person in China lengthened their shirt by just 1 inch, it would keep every British tailor employed for the rest of his life.

Interesting Factoid of the Day

2006-10-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

I read this factoid on Yahoo news today and thought it was very interesting:

When historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the American frontier "closed" in 1893, he was using the Census Bureau definition of "frontier" as areas having no more than six people per square mile. By that same density definition, the number of such counties actually has been increasing: from 388 in 1980 to 397 in 1990 to 402 in 2000. Kansas has more "frontier" land now than it did in 1890.

Seems more and more people are saying, "We're not in Kansas anymore."

Street Jousting or Jackass Number Shanghai

2006-10-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today on what is known locally as "Food Street". It's two blocks full of restaurants and street vendors selling food. I'll write more on the comparative safety of the food later. For now, I'd like to focus on what appears to be the most powerful force known to man (or at least to the people who wield this awesome force). I'm referring to none other than the annoying horn. Seems people on bicycles and scooters think that just because they have an annoying horn, mere mortals and pedestrians should automatically jump out of the way and let them through. Well, I wanted to see what would happen if one of these pedestrians (me) finally had enough and refused to yield. Like Mookey from Do The Right Thing, I wanted to through the proverbial trash can through the window of Sal's Famous pizzeria. So, when the next guy on a scooter came honking along, I proceeded to plant myself and stand my ground as he came barreling down the path at the breakneck speed of approximately 1.5 miles per hour. We were locked in a game of chicken only he probably wasn't aware of it because to my surprise, he didn't stop! Instead, he came crashing into my elbow, almost knocked himself over, and just kept motoring along as though nothing had happened, bumping into other people along the way. Guess that answers that question.

Carrot and Sticks

2006-10-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

I read an Oddly Enough Reuters article a few weeks ago that the biggest complaint residents in Shanghai have about the city is the number of people walk around in pajamas. Funny, I would have listed the spitting or the shoving well above the pajamas, but that's just me. Anyhow, walking to work today I saw an old guy in pajamas and about a block later a street vendor selling packages of pajamas. It got me thinking about the U.S. illegal drug policy and how governments can most effectively affect markets.

Basically, I think governments can best influence markets by providing carrots to demand and sticks to supply. You can't really roll out a bunch of tanks and force people to stop wearing pajamas or using drugs. Well, maybe the Chinese governement can, but I digress. Instead, you can have a bunch of public service announcements extolling the virtues of not wearing pajamas or just saying no. At the same time, the government can crack down on pajama stores and drug dealers. In this case, demand is dispursed while supply is concentrated. Sticks seem to be less effective on dispursed entities than concentrated ones and carrots to concentrated entities smacks of special interest groups and unfair rewards.

What about the cases where demand is centralized and supply dispursed? Is there something wrong with punishing a few people just because they want something government is trying to discourage? Are there effective ways to increase supply or do you just create markets without customers?

Thoughts? Comments?

0 to $1.65 Billion in 20 Months

2006-10-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

What were you doing in February 2005? I was spending most of my free time looking for a house and planning my wedding. Since then, I've accomplished both of those goals along with landing my job doing turnaround work for Carl Ichan. I've been at the new job for just under 11 months now and have some pretty neat accomplishments under my belt including turning around a textile mill in Alabama in under 4 months and taking over daily managment of a sourcing operation in Shanghai. However, all of that pales in comparison to the founders of YouTube. Man, that's impressive.

So Close, Yet So Far

2006-10-09T00:21:00.001-07:00

I’m on an ANA flight from SFO to Shanghai via Tokyo. While the Business Class seat does have a pretty good recline, it’s still not fully horizontal. It’s going to be a rough week for my jetlag….

Now That’s What I Call An Informative Clerk!

2006-10-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

My wife was feeling a bit under the weather on Sunday morning so we stopped by the Safeway near the Mission District in San Francisco to pick up some over the counter medication. Drowsy and generally out of it, my wife asked a clerk, “Where do I go to get some drugs?” The guy paused for a second and replied, “The pharmacy is against the back wall in the middle of the store. If you’re looking for the other kind, just go out back behind the parking lot, turn right, and go about 4 blocks up the street.”

Nobel Proposal for Cal Fundraising

2006-10-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

Cal has 7 Nobel Laureates currently on staff including recently awarded astronomer George Smoot. There are so many Nobel Laureates and so few parking spots that prime on campus parking spots are designated “NL PERMIT ONLY”, reserved for Nobel Laureates. I had the honor of meeting Dr. Smoot this past weekend while I was on campus for my 10 year reunion. It got me thinking about a great fundraising opportunity. Cal should sponsor an annual black tie Nobel Prize Extravaganza to honor all of the Nobel Laureates associated with Cal. According to wikipedia, there are 61 Nobel Laureates associated with Berkeley, although some are deceased. The dinner should be limited to 10 times the number of Nobel Laureates including the Laureates themselves and one significant other. Each Laureate would then be seated at a different table with 8 benefactors who make a minimum contribution of $250 per plate. Of course, the idea is that people will donate significantly more than the suggested $250 per person. Also, a tiered incentive structure could be established. For example, $1,000 would get you a poster-sized photo of all of the Laureates with their autographs. I think most of the Laureates would be willing to attend a nice dinner in their honor once a year. Who (aside from Sean Penn) wouldn’t attend an event organized by your peers in appreciation and honor of your contributions to society? If anyone in the Cal Development Office wants to work on this with me, please drop me a line.

Highlights from My 10 Year Reunion

2006-10-09T00:19:00.001-07:00

I was in the Bay Area attending my 10 year college reunion this past weekend. In keeping with the namesake of the blog, here are some completely random thoughts:

One of my fraternity brothers is graduating this December after 17 consecutive years at Cal.

I should really rephrase that to read, “claims to be graduating”.

I have another fraternity brother who has been at Cal for 16 consecutive years and doesn’t appear to be close to graduating.

Telegraph Avenue is definitely starting to gentrify. There’s even a fancy Adidas store now.

Happily, my favorite restaurant, Steve’s Korean BBQ, is alive and well. They raised their prices once while I was at Cal. The prices haven’t gone up since. The portion sizes haven’t decreased any, either.

Has anyone calculated Coach Tedford’s impact on the local Berkeley economy? I wouldn’t be surprised if the figure is over $10 million annually (10,000 extra fans per game x $100 on admission, food, drinks, and merchandise x 5 games per season = $5 million). This figure doesn’t include hotel accommodations for out of town fans. There were thousands of Oregon fans in town this past Saturday

Shady Rental Car Tactics

2006-10-09T00:19:00.000-07:00

What’s up with rental car places always trying to rip you off with the stupid insurance scams? Let’s see, $29.99 a day for the car and $15 a day in optional insurance payments?!?!? If you pay with a platinum credit card, why aren’t they obligated to tell you that you’re giving them money for NOTHING since platinum credit cards have automatic rental car insurance coverage? Shouldn’t that tell you something if your credit card company is willing to just throw it in for free? The woman at the Alamo counter at SFO this past weekend had the gall to ask, “So did you want the premium insurance or are you OK with just the basic?” Of course, this was a trick question since the right answer is to decline all coverage including the basic package. Once, an agent asked me, “Do you want to purchase supplemental insurance coverage?” I replied, “No, just give me the car.” I was in a hurry and didn’t bother looking at the contract until I had pulled out of the parking lot. The agent had taken my reply to mean, “Please take that answer out of context and charge me an extra $10 for car liability coverage.” I complained to the site manager when I returned the car. He told me it was a simple misunderstanding and unfortunately, there was nothing he could do since I had purchased potential liability protection and piece of mind which technically I did receive. I asked him how commonly this “misunderstanding” occurred and how much spiff payment the agents get per unnoticed “misunderstanding”. He promptly refunded me my money and told me to have a good day.

Hello, Fat Lady!

2006-10-09T00:16:00.000-07:00

Now that the Dodgers and Yankees are both out of the postseason, guess I can get back to blogging.

Tracy-Looking Criminal Beware!

2006-10-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

Attention Tracy-looking criminal: the CIA is on to you!

Tracy and I were at JFK yesterday when some guy approached her in the airport security line. He flashed a pretty fake looking badge and said he was with the CIA and asked if she would follow him for additional screening. Another guy showed me his ID, politely told me that they were only interested in talking to her, and then proceeded to question me! I must admit I was a bit skeptical at the whole scenario until I noticed 8 or so plain-clothes people converge upon us. They were all dressed differently (some in suits, some casually, one or two "homeboy" style) but all had one thing in common: as they approached, they all produced a badge dangling from their neck. They asked us for two forms of picture ID which coincidently we had and where we were going and so on and so forth. They told me that Tracy matched the desciption of a criminal they were after and had a warrant out for her arrest. Of course, this got me wondering exactly what sort of heinous acts a petite Tiawanese woman could committ in the first place?

Anyhow, they also asked me where I worked and where I lived to which I always pause and think, "Well, that's sort of a long story. In fact, I've set up this blog so to help answer that exact question...."

Tips for Restaurant Owners

2006-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

If there are two qualities my mother imbued me with it is a love of food and the ability to point out what people are doing wrong. I thought I'd share some of that magic gratis. Without further adieu here are my suggestions for restaurant owners:

Charge less for entrees, make portion sizes smaller, and make it up in desserts. I can't tell you the last time I had any room in my stomach for dessert after the appetizer and entree. Everyone knows desserts are highest margin items. Build it into your pricing model.

Speed up the appetizers and spare the bread. Who wants bread anyways? I go out to restaurants to eat FOOD not fill up on bread and butter.

Continuing with that theme, take my appetizer order when I leave my name for the table. Doing this simple task accomplishes two things: first, it insures I'll spend money on appetizers and second, it reduces the amount of time I tie up a table.

Clean the freakin' bathrooms every once in a while.

Tell me how much the specials are. How come no one ever mentions how much they cost? I'm much more likely to order the sea bass in the red wine reduction sauce if I know it's not going to be $49.95. What sort of license to steal is the special anyhow?

Don't offer seafood on Mondays. Everyone knows fishermen aren't working on Sundays. They're too busy watching the Sea Hawks or the Patriots or something. And even if it is fresh, most people will just assume that it isn't.

That's enough for now. I'll post more as I notice them. Feel free to leave your own comments as well.

Macking on Cupcakes

2006-10-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

So I was walking around Greenwich Village with the wife on Saturday night when we stumbled across a little park filled with middle-aged women sitting around eating cupcakes. While odd, the weather was beautiful this weekend so I just figured it was somebody's birthday or something. Then, kitty-corner to the park was a LONG line outside of a storefront. It reminded me of the "secret" hot bars in Los Angeles which frequently have non-descript facades. Turns out it was Magnolias!

We decided to go stand in the long line since, well, we really didn't have anything else to do. 15 minutes later, we were inside picking out our cupcakes and other sweets. I was skeptical at first that it was all just hype (the crowd control guy at the front door told us there is a line out the door every hour of every day), but I gotta say, that was a darn good cupcake. The frosting was sweet but not too sweet. The cupcake itself had this crunchy crust at the top but was moist on the inside. All for $1.50 each.

Just to complete the experience, we decided to go up to 68th and Broadway to watch the Chronicles of Narnia but it turns out that movie isn't playing there anymore.

Tracy on iwillteachyoutoberich.com

2006-09-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

littleMAN update: Tracy was interviewed on iwillteachyoutoberich.com. Read all about it:

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/archives/2006/09/friday-entrepreneur-littleman-style-retail.html

Worthless Skill: 10-Key

2006-09-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

I learned to 10-key during a summer internship back in college. For those of you unfamiliar with 10-key, count yourself lucky. 10-key is to numbers what touch typing is to words. Basically, it means I can type a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet very quickly without looking at my fingers. I gained this ability during a summer internship doing a bunch of data entry for something like $3.65 an hour back in college. Anyhow, I'm in the middle of doing my expense report (which is one of the only times I use 10-key) and just happened to think back to how I learned to 10-key. I feel like one of those Price Club cashiers from the 80s and early 90s. Who was the genius who designed that process? One person calling out the UPC code while another punched it into the register? Seriously, why didn't they just use UPC guns?

And why the heck can't I just submit a corporate credit card statement as my expense form and call it a day?

The Emperor’s Used Clothes

2006-09-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, my dry cleaner had a small delay which put me in the awful predicament of not having a clean, pressed shirt to wear to work. I had to choose between wearing one of the following:

The same shirt to work 2 days in a row

A VERY fancy white shirt my wife bought that should only be worn on weekend nights

A polo shirt with dress slacks

Normally, this would be a no-brainer and I’d go with the first option. As luck would have it, the shirt I had worn was a distinctive cream color so there would be no mistaking it was the same shirt, different day. Now I didn’t actually talk to the dry cleaner as I got home late and was relayed the news via my doorman. I decided not to worry about it until the morning and see if my shirts would miraculously appear in the morning.

When I confronted the dry cleaner, she was extremely apologetic. Then, something most unexpected happened. She offered to loan me a clean shirt for the day! I must admit I was weirded out by the offer. She reassured me that the clothes were clean and wouldn’t be missed. I asked her if she had ever loaned out any of my shirts and she got offended I would suggest something like that. Silly me.

Anyhow, my skepticism quickly melted away when she bought out a beautiful Joseph Abboud 100% Egyptian cotton shirt. This was clearly a shirt my wife would approve of. Unfortunately, the neck was a bit too small and the arms were a bit too short. Since I don’t wear a tie to work, I could get around the first problem. I was considering walking around all day with my sleeves rolled up but it’s getting cold in New York and I would have looked ridiculous. The second shirt she brought out was a perfect fit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly as nice as the Joseph Abboud shirt. I was finally persuaded to take the well-fitting shirt when it was explained to me that these shirts had been abandoned by their previous owners and that I could just keep the one after I wore it. I wonder if I’m ever going to get my own shirts back or if in a few months, some other guy is going to be admiring a shirt that’s a little too big for him. With any luck, that guy will fit the Joseph Abboud shirt.

Update: I got my own shirts back the next day and no one even noticed I was wearing a used shirt.

Weekend in Chicago

2006-09-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

I was in Chicago over the weekend attending the wedding of an old college friend of mine. As part of the wedding festivities, we took an architectural boat cruise tour of Chicago. For those of you who have never done so, I highly recommend the cruise. Chicago really is a beautiful city in terms of architecture and public spaces. I was particularly struck how the efforts of a handful of private individuals from the Wrigleys to the Pritzkers have really enhanced the character of the city.

While I was in Chicago, my wife was helping with a March of Dimes fundraiser in Los Angeles. I posted some photos from that event on her website. Enjoy!

At Least He Was Honest About The Watch...

2006-09-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were walking around our neighborhood in Shanghai the other day when we came across a little stall selling Paul Frank merchandise. His inventory levels and lack of POS (Point of Sale -- printed materials such as posters and stickers used to build the brand and entice customers to buy) caused some concern to the legitimacy of the merchandise. Further, the guy violated one of my foreign country shopping rules (he spoke English perfectly). He did have some quality stuff at rock bottom prices that were hard to resist. Instead of haggling over price, he offered us our choice of a handsome Paul Frank wristwatch with the purchase of any two clothing items. I started examining the quality of the stuff closer and decided to cut to the chase and just ask him directly if the stuff was real. He replied, "Well, to tell you the truth, the watch is fake but the clothes are real!" We bought two items, bargained him down a few bucks, and let him keep the watch.

Regional Fast Food

2006-09-21T03:25:00.000-07:00

Here's another random post about food:

Many people lament the homogenization of the American landscape and claim nowhere is this more evident than in the fast food industry. It seems as though regional charm is lost with all of our cookie-cutter McDonalds and KenTacoHuts. However, I think these critics aren’t digging deep enough. There is plethora of regional fast food options. San Francisco has all those wraps places (at least back a few years ago they did). Los Angeles has many ethic chains such as El Tarasco, El Pollo Inca, and Noodle Planet. The South has Waffle House. New York has the soup/sandwich/salad chains (Hale and Hearty, Europa Café, and Café Metro). Something tells me that if any of these regional chains go national, there will be other concepts in line to take their place.

Some Completely Random Food Thoughts

2006-09-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

Chocolate is not very common in China. I never really thought about it before (mainly because I'm not a big fan of chocolate) but I happened to see a chocolate napoleon in the window of a bakery the other day and realized I hadn't seen a chocolate dessert in a few weeks!

I had a business lunch at a Malayasian restaurant a few days ago when I bit into a delicious starchy vegetable which was strikingly familiar. After a few more bites, it dawned on me that I haven't had a potato is over a month. Evidently there's not much potato going on in Chinese cooking. Side note: There really aren't good synonyms for "realized" are there?

Restaurants in Pakistan charge much more for chicken than beef or lamb. And there's obviously never any pork on the menu.

Ever notice that pesto tastes better lukewarm versus piping hot?

Promotion Tradition in China

2006-09-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

Apparently there's a tradition in China that when you get a promotion, you need to buy everyone in the office dessert. I wonder how long it'll take the office staff to realize that every time I get hungry, somebody gets promoted.

And while I'm on the topic of office food, during my first week in the Shanghai office, the office manager diligently took my order for lunch every day because my lack of Mandarin prohibited me from just walking out of the office to lunch. I was a bit surprised when on the first day she ordered from a hot dog place. Day 2 was a sandwich shop. Finally, on day 3 I asked if there wasn't any Chinese food in China. Turns out they never order from the "American" places and were ordering the crappy and cold western food for my benefit. For some strange reason, after they found out I'd rather have hot food from a local place, they suddenly assumed I could just go out and order food for myself! Hence, the need to promote somebody to get some lunch around here.

October Baseball

2006-09-19T03:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote this entry a few weeks ago and had been waiting until October to publish it. Given the Dodgers dramatic win on Monday night, I felt it was time to put it on the blog. By the way, how the heck did Nomar not do the fist pump in homage to Gibson? For that matter, why didn't Steve Finley do it when he hit that walk off homer against the Padres to clinch the division back in '04? Anyhow, on with the post....

Anyone who has worked for me has heard this analogy umpteen times – I want to play October baseball. People who say baseball is boring are missing the point. At 162 games, the baseball season is more a war of attrition than anything else. During the season, players routinely take time off to rest and recuperate. Heck, some players are guilty of doing that during a game! However, come October, everybody is available to play. Ego and injury are set aside. Curt Shilling’s Achilles tendon isn’t that bloody. Kirk Gibson’s knees aren’t that sore. Turns out starting pitchers really don’t need four days rest after all and coming out of the bullpen isn’t going to kill them. And while star players are expected to produce (Reggie Jackson, for example), more often than not it seems a team effort is required (2003 Marlins, 2002 Angels, and 1988 Dodgers come to mind) or unlikely heroes immerge (Scott Brocious? Craig Counsel?). While it may sound silly, I try to capture the excitement of October baseball in my projects at work.

Coincidentally, I'll back in New York the next week through October 5th. Anyone up for tracking down some tickets and heading out to the Bronx or Queens with me let me know!

One More Rule...

2006-09-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Never eat at a restaurant with a barker in front trying to get you to dine there. I know most of you readers out there have made the same mistake.

Problem with Piracy

2006-09-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Besides that whole intellectual property/incentive to innovate mumbo-jumbo, piracy seems to have killed the Chinese software market. I searched in vain for a real copy of Photoshop CS2 this past weekend only to notice that there was virtually NO productivity software retailing in China. Judging from the plethora of Photoshop tutorial programs available, I'd say there is demand for Photoshop but no supply. The one legitimate retailer I spoke to said the prices software companies charge were just too high for most people in China. And apparently, the government has actually done a fairly decent job at cracking down on pirated software (unlike DVDs).

Seems like the Chinese government's priorities are a bit out of whack. If I were President of China, I'd crack down on pirated DVDs and hand out copies of MS Office, Photoshop, and AutoCAD to everyone in order to build a supply of knowledge workers to form another outsouring industry in China. As for the DVD crackdown, I'd start with that "The Constant Gardner" movie I watched this past weekend. Man, that movie was disappointing.

Attention Shoppers: YOU'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!

2006-09-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've got a new rule for my wife when she's out analyzing retailers in Shanghai (shopping): Never buy anything from a store that displays photos of foreign diplomat's wives. They might as well post a sign that says, "Attention Shoppers: YOU'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!" Two corollaries to that rule are: "Never buy anything from a store in China where you're the only Asian customer" and "Never buy anything from a store in China where the salespeople speak better English than you do. "

Oh yeah, and finally, "Never get involved with land wars in Asia."

Chinese Retailing: The Glass is 5 Full

2006-09-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

I spent the better part of the weekend analyzing Chinese retailing with the wife, an activity she likes to call "shopping". Something I found very interesting was that Chinese retailers have all these signs with single-digit numbers posted on the shelves. I will post a photo of one as soon as possible. These signs indicate the sale price of an item in 10% increments. WHAT?!?! So, if you see something with a 7 in front of it, it's 30% off. I suppose it's actually more clear to list how much of the price remains rather than how much is removed but I'm just not used to it. Also, I don't quite understand the lack of the trailing zero, but then again, there's no zero digit in Chinese anyhow.

We walk passed a store that had a 1 sign in the window (90% off!) and I had to go in to see for myself. Of course, there was only 1 item in the entire store which was truly 90% off (a hideous purple woman's coat). I wanted to know if I bought that item if they'd take off the 1 sign in the window. My wife refused to translate for me. Either she didn't want to be embarrassed or more likely she didn't want me to buy the ugly coat for her to find out.

Cool Apple iPod+iTunes Add

2006-09-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

There are some large LCD panels around Shanghai that display messages and commercials. I happened to see one I recognized and really liked. It's the iPod+iTunes ad with thousands of CD covers flying around, forming shapes, and ultimately going into an iPod. You can see it here.

Besides being visually appealing, I like the ad for being modular and able to be mass-customized very easily. You see, the one playing in Shanghai is slightly different. Rather than CD covers with Frank Sinatra, Nirvana, and Seal, the ad in China features Asian recording stars (probably Hong Kong-based Canto-Pop acts, actually). I couldn't find the Asian version but a quick search on YouTube did yield this variant from Germany. Someone at Apple's ad agency probably read The Goal.

Half the Work, All the Cost

2006-09-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, my wife and I looked into getting Chinese foot massages. We had spent the better part of the day walking around the Bund and Yu Gardens and our feet were killing us. We had about half hour to spare before meeting up with some friends for a nightcap. After a quick taxi ride to the "Good Food and Relaxation Street" (I'll try to post a photo sometime this weekend), we set out looking for a place to get a 30 minute massage. Unfortunately, it seems that everyone offered only 70 minute massages. We tried to bargin them into giving us two 30 minute massages for the price of one 70 minute one. Surely with 6 or 7 places on the same block, market forces would prevail and somebody would give us a deal! However, no one would budge. After squandering what precious little time we had hangling over the price instead of getting our rub on, we walked away massageless and met up with our friends instead. Upon hearing this story, one of my friends asked, "Why didn't you just each pay for the 70 mintue massage and leave after 30 minutes? How much would that have cost in total?" I thought about it for a minute, did some RMB to dollar conversions, and sheepishly replied, "$6.25 -- cheaper than laundering a shirt at the hotel."

Words to Live By

2006-09-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

A Master in the Art of Living draws no distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he is always doing both.

James Michener

Censorship Hypocrisy

2006-09-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

One of my friends tried to read my blog only to find out that it was blocked by his corporate firewall. Seems a bit hypocritical for people in the US to be up in arms about Google agreeing to block content on it's Chinese site while corporations are blocking my site! Now I know how Luther Campbell felt.

And if you're trying to get my content through a corporate firewall, just use the syndication features on the lower right and add me to your my.yahoo account. And yes, I know this advice is akin to the video tape that explains how to install your VCR.

Further Thoughts on Alex Cabrera

2006-09-13T06:53:00.000-07:00

There's one thing Alex Cabrera has on executives looking to work in China: I doubt he ever put in a full day's work and then stayed up all night to get on conference calls back with the head office in New York. Friday nights in China are particularly popular times for NY conference calls. The only upside is that Monday mornings are generally pretty quiet as most of the US is busy watching Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy at that time. If only the US had Friday Morning Football....

Darn Metric System!

2006-09-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I'm a scientist at head and I LOVE the metric system and hate the fact that the US is still on the other one. However, in practice, Celsius is terrible. There just isn't enough granularity in 1% difference between water freezing and boiling. I can't set my office temperature to a comfortable 69 degrees F. I can only set it to whole integers of Celsius: 20 C (too cold) or 21 C (too hot). I feel like Goldielocks without the Mama-Bear porridge.

Which reminds me of another funny travel factoid: the microwave oven in my new corporate townhouse has an automatic setting for porridge.

Another Reason I Blog

2006-09-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

In addition to trying to keep in touch with people, I also started blogging because I was starting to get a complex about not having any idea what the heck "web 2.0" was all about. Anyhow, part of this web 2.0 stuff seems to be the ability to my stuff via on my.yahoo, your google home, page or any other "feedreader" if you use either. From about a day of trying it out, I like the my.yahoo interface the best. Surprisingly, Google's interface (and feedreader) is pretty bad. Actually, this blogger site (owned by Google) is pretty terrible as well and I'm considering porting everything over to a wordpress account.

That being said, if you haven't toyed around with Google AdWords, there's some pretty powerful stuff there. For example, I'm able to see that 2 people clicked on my link to my wife's website, . I'm also able to see that she got 1 visit from Bellingham, WA; 1 from Conway, AR (alright, who are you?); 1 from Zurich (Hello, Sanjay); 1 from Scottsdale, AZ (Hello, Jason); 7 from Lenexa, KS; and so on. I'm only able to view this information because I'm advertising my wife's company on Google AdWords. I wonder why Google doesn't incorporate this into Blogger and just blow typepad, wordpress, and the rest of the blogging tools out of the water.

Gentrifi-Nation

2006-09-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

I guess it takes 4 years and 365 days (364 days + 1 leap year day) to start the process of gentrifying a nation. Coke and Pepsi executives are the modern-day equivalent of missionaries from a few hundred years ago. Two of my good friends (and former bosses) were with PepsiCo in Russia and Bulgaria back in the early 90s and have great stories to tell about that experience. If I weren't married, I'd be tempted to apply for a job at this plant in Kabul myself!

Click here to read a press release from Coke.

The Next Alex Cabrera/Tuffy Rhodes

2006-09-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

A friend of a friend is thinking about moving to China for work and wanted to get my thoughts on the subject. While I've only been here a short while, I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject and have spoken to a number of people who have relocated here "permanently" (whatever that means for my generation -- more on this later). My advice? Be prepared to be the next Alex Cabrera or Tuffy Rhodes.

Who?

Exactly.

Alex Cabrera is probably the best baseball player and a household name in Japan over the past few years. Here's some more information about him. I'd post a link to the wikipedia site but for some reason, I have a very hard time connecting to wikipedia from China. Tuffy Rhodes was another great player in Japan who is relatively unknown in the U.S.

While China definitely has a great deal of opportunity for ambitious and young people (click here and here to read my posts about this topic), it's still not the U.S. Even if you hit 55 home runs a year in a foreign country, people will still question whether you can hit a Major League curveball. My advice for people who want to come to China would be:

Do it in lieu of paying your dues in the minor leagues. Think post-analyst, pre-business school.
Do it if you're not getting playing time (or the monetary contract you're looking for) in the U.S.
DEFINITELY do it if you're a Sino-phile and are planning on emigrating to China. If you fall into this category, I'd move here ASAP. Shanghai right now seems to have the same buzz as the Bay Area in the late 90s, Moscow in the mid 90s, or Prague in the early 90s. By the way, if anyone happens to know someone who has lived in all three of those places during those times, I'd like to meet him/her.

Personally, I believe China has a long way to go before it becomes the center of the business world (if in fact it ever does). And even if it does, China doesn't pass the second of litmus tests for places I want to live. First, I refuse to live in a place where owning a windshield scraper is required. And second, I will only live in a place I'd want my children to grow up in. For all the bad things about the U.S. (e.g. the Religious Right and Limousine Liberals), it's still the ONLY society as far as I'm concerned that is based on the personal freedom and belief in the individual.

5 Years Later

2006-09-11T03:10:00.000-07:00

(This space left blank intentionally.)