Global Thoughts — 8 April 2014

atlantis0001I was listening to the Angry Birds theme song as my kid was playing the game, and I figured it could be a Hassidic tune right out of some klezmer village in Eastern Europe. If someone in my synagogue started singing it to the liturgy, I don’t think anyone would notice anything strange about it. Try it — dee dee di di, dee dee di di,…..

We went with our kids to Nassau in the Bahamas for a weekend at Atlantis. They have this Dolphin experience where you get to swim with the dolphins. My son was very insulted because his sister kissed a dolphin and doesn’t want to kiss him. He offered to dress up in a dolphin costume if it would help. I don’t think my daughter was enthusiastic at the offer. I’m just wondering what he might do as a teenager.

One evening Elizabeth said she had a headache. Karen offered her some Tylenol but she refused and said she needed to get some fresh air. Karen offered to walk her around the block. She said no, but that she heard that Daddy was going to Children’s Place to buy some new kids clothes and that she would feel a lot better if she went along.

We went to the Crayola Factory in Easton Pennsylvania, almost an hour and a half drive from Manhattan. It is really one of the finest children’s attractions I’ve seen in America. It is a very creative and intelligent place to spend a few hours.

February 2014 Nassau 009We were with our kids Presidents Day weekend at Skytop in Pennsylvania for a weekend of winter sports. They went snow boarding, skiing and skating. Jeremy was watching the olympics and decided he wanted to snowboard. At nearby Alpine Mountain they did snow tubing. On a holiday weekend, there are lots of families with kids and the Saturday night Elimination Dance and March are extra fun with all the people around. But the most important thing was that the kids got sick of eating from the children’s menu and ate adult food on the last night — that’s right — fish, rice and vegetables. They told us that in that county they traded school holidays this year; they gave up Presidents Day in exchange for first day of hunting season. That is sacred to both students and teachers.

At the local planetarium there is a show about dark matter in the universe. They might just as well make a show about the inside of ladies’ pocket books. Another mystery: Why is it that 86% of women have shoes in their closet that they have never worn, and that 75% of the shoes in their closet are not regularly worn. 64% of them say the top reason they don’t wear the shoes is that they don’t fit well, and 55% say they couldn’t match them with outfits. So if you have a wife that brings home shoes and stuffs them in the original box in the closet and then doesn’t even take them out of the box months later, you know you’re not alone. Which is why women’s shoe sales are always 2 for 1 — they know that women are going to take home a bunch of shoes they will never wear and won’t bring back. If they can get them to take the shoes out of the store, they have the house on their side.

Story from a friend of mine who is with the US Air Force in Afghanistan. He’s on a base and there are Italian soldiers there. They are asked to help move a picnic table and they refuse. They are asked why they are being so lazy and their group leader comes right up to the American’s face and says to him “Our mission is……to be here.”

February 2014 Skytop 085During the week my kids were on intersession I’ve taken them each on one on one adventures. Elizabeth went with me to Saks Fifth Avenue for the first time and we lunched in the café (which really needs updating). I told her that this is where grownup ladies go to get themselves “treats.” She found it all quite exciting. Jeremy and I went for lunch to Alice’s Tea Cup, which is one of several boutique places mainly where daughters and their rather wealthy mums or grandma-mas go for tea and scones. Jeremy had a sandwich with nutella and sliced apples, and I think you can probably put chopped liver in a sandwich and if it has nutella in it there is a chance it might be eaten.

Let me talk about food for a minute. We eat out mostly Italian. My kids say they want to go to Italy because they figure the food is good there. Karen and I just ate at a really good kosher restaurant worth mentioning because it is the only kosher restaurant that is really equivalent to a French bistro outside France that we know of. A French person who had a non-kosher restaurant in Brooklyn for 7 years became religiously observant and switched the place to kosher a year ago. The food is great and tastes like it should. Most people who run kosher restaurants have always been kosher and have no idea what food that is not kosher should taste like. I personally don’t know about non-kosher meat, for instance, and have never before had a risotto with meat on the plate. But we ate with people who do know and who said it was great. It’s called Chagall and it’s in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Another attempt at a kosher French restaurant is called Pardes in Brooklyn and the food is also very gourmet but more exotic, and the desserts didn’t work very well. It is also run by a chef who recently became religiously observant and wanted to do a French restaurant. New York increasingly has a decent number of kosher restaurants with more exotic themes because there are enough people to make a market for it but most of the dinner places have the same continental menu. I mention Chagall because it succeeded at trying something different and actually making it work.

February 2014 Skytop 111I find it amazing that you can now watch the slalom skiing at the Olympics and they can superimpose the image of another skier doing the same run on top of another person so that you can see the difference between two skiers a few hundreds of a second apart. I find it very disturbing how small the difference is between the winner and the loser in these sports. All that work for such a small difference. Nowadays you look at a country’s olympic team and its coaches and players come from all over the world; it’s no longer clear that a team matches its country. I don’t think the Sochi olympics did too well for the Russians; a major corporate sponsor found that half of the people who were supposed to go to the olympics on a corporate junket cancelled out because they just didn’t want to go. The New York Times ran negative stories about Sochi for a solid month before the olympics started and it is no surprise that so many westerners were scared to go there.

Speaking of amazing technology, isn’t it amazing that you can go to Google and type “current time moscow” and even before you finish typing the word moscow the time is showing up on your screen. There is even a screen prompt to remind you in case you mean “moscow idaho.”

I was watching a BBC World weather report and the person spoke of the temperature “struggling to get above freezing.” I can just picture all this air around an area fighting to get a bit warmer so that it could climb above the 32 degree mark on the thermometer.

In Germany it is so hard to fire a worker or to punish him/her that if you really truly suck you get promoted so that you become somebody else’s problem.

I visited my 101 year old great aunt who lives in an assisted living facility. She told me that whenever she gets a nice gift such as a sweater, one of the orderlies steals it. They steal from her closet and the drawers in her room. She says that at least she still has her wits around her and at least those that steal from her try and cover it up. Those that don’t have all their marbles, she says, lose all respect of the caretakers – they just blatantly take things and don’t even care that the patients know it. Something to consider about the loss of dignity of aging.

An interesting statistic – they keep telling you how many people sign up for health care. Problem is half the people who sign up don’t actually pay their premiums so they wind up not being covered. A friend of ours is on an Obamacare insurance plan in New York City because she has no other choice and she said that it is impossible to find doctors who will accept it.

Last month I stated that Avigdor Lieberman was saying such nice things about Kerry and I figured that one explanation could be was that Lieberman knew he had no chance with his peace plan for the Israelis and Palestinians. I guess that turned out to be the correct assessment.

I am having a hard time getting excited over the Russians invading Crimea. The Ukraine is completely lawless and corrupt and the people over there hate each other and are running around killing each other and setting fires all over the place. Why wouldn’t you expect the Russian army to go into Crimea and protect the Russians? The Israelis over there say they are glad to see the Russkies there keeping order on the streets. I understand that it is bad precedent but I just don’t feel the need to hold the line against the Russkies just because they are a bunch of thugs and doing pretty much what the Nazis started to do in the 1930’s invading countries in Europe. Frankly, if the Russians want to be burdened with the Ukraine, I say let them. They are bankrupt and have their own checkered history in Europe. That said, the Baltic Republics will be a different matter because they are a NATO country; Ukraine isn’t.

The Economist has a cover about 100 years of decline for Argentina. I first visited the country in 1988 and the country was an economic basket case at the time. You could get a steak for $1 and a Nina Ricci suit for $50. All I have seen is 20 years of continued economic crap in that country. Until they get with the program, it will be more of the same.

February 2014 Skytop 066Some thoughts about foreign affairs generally. I know that America could in 24 hours shut down Assad in Syria and whatever is in charge in North Korea. What is going on there are terrible tragedies. Problem is that America doesn’t want to because (1) everyone hates America no matter what we do so we get no thanks for trying to do anything nice, and (2) America doesn’t have the money to clean up the mess it creates by solving one problem and creating another — so why start? We’re just not going to do it anymore after Afghanistan and Iraq taught us that.  I am perfectly happy to see Obama be very cautious about doing very much, and note that Bibi Netanyahu in Israel has also been very cautious about acting on the world stage and this has not been a bad thing either. The Arabs don’t like his policies but they do find him to be a responsible actor. The reason I mention Bibi is to point out that military and political caution is not necessarily reserved to liberals. People think Obama is a laf-laf but I am not upset with his policies on the world stage. I am very satisfied to see the US on the sidelines in the Ukraine.

Some travel notes: The airlines are increasingly rewarding frequent flyers for spending money and not just booking miles traveled. So what’s happening? People are booking seats at the last minute to pay the highest fare because their companies are paying for the tickets and they get to keep the frequent flyer miles. Which is what happens when people who make the purchase decisions don’t see the bills, which is similar to how health care costs shot up when HMO’s replaced indemnity insurance in the US (also discussed last month). Markets don’t work when people spending the money don’t care about getting value.

I think that hotel gyms are important. Turns out that only about 7% of travelers agree that it matters to their choice.

I had an overnight visit to Las Vegas and stayed at the Mandalay Bay’s “The Hotel” which I thought was very good in all respects and it is very close to the airport. They have a really cool pool area for kids with wave pool and lazy river.  The Terry Fator show at the Mirage was also family friendly. American Express has a lounge in Las Vegas airport and is copying it at Laguardia to appease card holders who are being kicked out of all the lounges that used to admit Amex card holders. But the new lounge will be before security and in one of the several buildings that encompass that airport. I figure very few people will use the lounge. But Amex does get a Global Thoughts booby award for increasing brand awareness. In the bathrooms they play the same music you hear on hold when you call their travel department over the phone. Can’t escape that one.

March 2014 011People on the Jewish holiday of Purim were walking down the streets of Manhattan’s upper west side talking into their cellphones about the man-eating shark walking down the street. It was Jeremy in his Purim costume. Here he is in all his glory.

 

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