More recently (1998, I think) Sandy and I bought a
timeshare, which we are happy about, use a lot and do not regret, but my
thought process was all whacky. On the
plus side, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency had placed a moratorium on new
rooms, so with continued growth in visitors to the area, I figured that the
value of our timeshare could only go up.
So if we ended up not liking our decision, we could always sell it for
more than we paid for it. As we were
leaving the building that day I noticed a big sign across the street
advertising 70% off on timeshare resales.
That was my first clue that the secondary market for timeshares was
nothing like the real estate market. Who
knew? I also figured that the price of
accommodations at 5-star hotels were going to keep going up and up, with
inflation and with more and more people from around the world travelling and
putting pressure on hotel rates. Well,
after getting through the “dot com bomb” of 2000 and the “great recession” of
2009, rates are finally experiencing upward pressure, but it has been about a
15 year period of low and falling room rates.
During that 15 years, the rise of the Internet and social
networking have created numerous ways for would-be vacationers to find good
deals on-line. In addition to Craig’s
List, Amazon.com, eBay, etc, there are sites like Vacation Rentals by Owner
where people can find the accommodations to fit their budgets and tastes. I
didn’t see that coming! But guess what is not protected from
inflation and has risen every year…our maintenance fees! With careful planning, flexibility about
mid-week and off-season deals, and with the ability to be spontaneous, we can
keep our stays down to $100 or so per night at four and five star hotels (based
on dividing our annual maintenance fees by the number of nights we book). This is still better than most anything
available in the market, but we are committed to paying the maintenance fees
whether we want to travel or not. Other
people can look on-line, see something that peaks their interest, and decide to
go or not. If they don’t want to spend
the money, they don’t need to. Sandy and
I know that if we didn’t have the required fees, we probably wouldn’t get
around to going anywhere. We love the
experiences we have been enjoying these last 15 years and that we look forward
to in the future.
So this works for us, but when the resort operator asks
how likely we are to recommend “vacation ownership” (the new term for
timeshare) to friends and family, the answer is “not very.” The typical family with one or two careers
and one or two children in school and in sports has just a few narrow windows
of time for family vacations. Also, kids
would rather go camping, in many cases, than use the pool and game room at a
fancy hotel. Over the years we ended up
acquiring a total of 30,000 points at an average cost of just under $2 per
point, or some $58,000 in total. Our
timeshare owner/operator, Diamond Resorts International, has increased the purchase
prices to some $8 to $9 per point in the last two years. I hope people are really buying at those
prices, because it means that our points really are worth more than we paid for
them. As we get older and less mobile,
instead of passing our points (and related maintenance fee obligations) on to
our children or grandchildren, perhaps I will find a way to sell out at $4-5
per point in a private transaction.
As a more current example, my logical mind has wondered
why the country of Mexico doesn’t simply take a good look at our economic system
and do the same thing that we are doing.
I mean, when a new professional sports stadium is to be built, or an
airport is to be upgraded, don’t they go around the country and see what the
state of the art is and what other people have recently done, take the best
ideas and do that? Why can’t a country
like Mexico, which borders on the U.S., study what we have done and do the
same? If I were the president of Mexico
and saw that my citizens were risking life and limb to try to sneak into the
U.S. for the hope of having a better life, I would be so embarrassed. I would want to create the same or better
opportunities in my own country. Why
can’t they do what we did? People with
common sense offer a variety of answers, such as cultural differences, corruption
in government, lack of universities, etc.
In each case I think, “Well, maybe, but I’m not so sure.” Short answer:
I don’t. But at least I know I
don’t know.
In a similar vein, logic says that wages and standards of
living should move closer together throughout the world, because of the
Internet and advances in electronics and communications. In Silicon Valley, companies must source their products and services
where they can minimize costs, because that is what their competitors are
doing. So wages should be going up in
some parts of the world, due to increased demand, and down in the U.S. due to
reduced demand, until some sort of parity exists. But while there is some evidence of this, it
is very minor and very slow in taking shape.
Sandy doesn’t sew our clothes anymore, because it has become cheaper to
buy them. And the stores in our area
have very customer-friendly return policies, in case she changes her mind on
something that she has bought. She says
that between the cost of the pattern and the cost of the material, it is much
more sensible to simply buy the item, unless you have lots of time and really
like to sew as a hobby. A huge, fresh
delicious apple pie from Costco costs so little that it makes no sense to make
it at home unless, again, you enjoy baking as a hobby. To my mind, these are examples of an improved
standard of living in the U.S.
What has happened is that labor costs in some parts of
the world are so low that the retail stores can keep prices very low, and still
make good profits. But as American
companies place increasing production demands on companies in third world
countries, and compete with each other for those goods and services, prices and
standards of living in those countries should rise. A middle class should arise. With today’s mobility of ideas, technology,
capital and management, I don’t know why this isn’t happening on a much more
noticeable basis.
I suppose a parallel puzzle is why we have “rich” states
and “poor” states within the U.S.
Weather of course impacts the desirability of living in certain states,
hence housing prices in those states, which in turn may impact prevailing
wages. However, taken as a whole, the standards of living among the states
should move toward a very similar level.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t residents of certain states move to other
states? There are no doubt some common
sense answers, but I don’t know what they are.
Some people want to stay near family, but that seems like a fairly minor
factor in the overall scheme of things.
Maybe not. Maybe moving the way I
did, from New York to California, takes a set of personal attributes or
circumstances that are more the exception than the rule. I don’t know.
Another example of how my brain works is the signs we see
as we approach the border line of a city by car. They show population and elevation. Population is interesting and relevant, but
elevation? Unless it is really unusual,
who cares about the elevation? A much
more interesting and relevant bit of information would be per capita income, or
racial mix, or maybe something about the crime rate or property values or
something. These are things that change
slowly, and could be updated whenever the population is updated on the sign. I’ve never asked anybody why the signs all show
elevation, but I suspect it is a holdover from pre-airplane days when the map
makers were helping people plan the push westward via covered wagon and the
building of the trans-continental railroad.
Why else would elevation matter to a motorist except if, as mentioned,
it is really unusual?
For the longest time I was frustrated about the medical
profession’s seeming lack of expertise, in terms of definitive causes and
effects. I or a loved one would complain
of a symptom, and the doctor would start in with, “Well, it could be this or it
could be that; it may be nothing, we’re not sure,” etc. I would think, “You guys have been studying
and working on the human body for many centuries now, and the human body has
not changed in all that time. Surely the
medical profession has seen everything and knows everything there is to know
about the human body and what can go wrong and how to treat it.” I finally had to accept that, firstly, all
that accumulated knowledge cannot reside in any one person, no matter how smart
they are, and that secondly, we humans really complicate matters with our
perceptions of what we think we are experiencing, and with our abilities to
express what we are experiencing. It is
probably a lot easier to work on animals, because they don’t complicate matters
by saying anything.
In 2nd or 3rd grade the boy next to
me showed me how to pretend to drop my pencil, then bend way down and look up
the skirt of the nearest girl while retrieving the pencil. First of all, I would never have thought of
that, but just as today, I recognize a good idea when I hear it. In this case, I went along with it, not
really understanding what we were hoping to see or find up the girl’s skirt. I didn’t have any sisters and didn’t know how
girls felt about boys seeing their underwear.
If I had realized that they would be embarrassed or would cry, I’m sure
I would have been a lot more motivated.
I think the teacher even asked what we thought we were doing, and I
really didn’t know. Innocence is the
best defense.
Some people contemplate the meaning of life while on the
pot. I contemplated the design of a roll
of toilet paper. Why all these little
squares? Did they really think anybody
could use just one square at a time?
Something tells me I was thinking of my 3rd grade teacher who
encouraged us to take only one piece of paper from the paper towel
dispenser. She said, “Look. My hands are bigger than yours, and I only
need to use one sheet.” Maybe she wiped
her hands on her dress when we weren’t looking. Anyway, unlike the milk carton issue, I don’t
think I ever asked anyone why toilet paper had so many little squares. Consequently, I think I was grown before it
dawned on me how awkward it would be to have perforations every 12 – 24 inches
or so. Of course we were expected to
use more than one square at a time; the perforations were for convenience in
tearing off the desired length. Who
knew?
There were no mechanical pencils in my school days. We mainly used #2 yellow pencils, with those
orange or brown colored erasers attached.
I don’t know how many times I started to use the eraser and found it to
be hard as a rock and of no use for the purpose of neatly erasing
anything. I would wonder, in
frustration, why a company would produce pencils with lousy, useless
erasers. Once mechanical pencils came
out I never gave that another thought until helping one of the grandkids
recently. Then it dawned on me that if
you leave a pencil lying around for a year or so, the eraser becomes hard and
useless. They work fine when they are
new. Glad I solved that one before the
end of my life!
Here is another “puzzlement”, as Winnie the Pooh would
say: Given today’s mobile electronic capabilities, why is the floor of the New
York Stock Exchange still a mob scene of people yelling and screaming and
waving their arms for attention? What
are they doing that couldn’t be accomplished better and more quickly by
computer in the comfort of an office? Or
this: Why do I see people going to great lengths to get a parking spot as close
to the Quicksilver Park entrance as possible to begin their exercise – walking
or jogging. Some of them are probably on
a tight time schedule, but not most of them, I would guess. And the time spent circling for a good
parking spot could be used for their primary goal - exercise. Is it just me?
Why in the San Francisco Bay Area are we often worried
about drought conditions and not getting enough rainfall, when thriving desert
locations, like Palm Springs and Las Vegas, never seem to worry about rainfall
or water shortages? Whatever they are
doing to supply water to those places…why aren’t we doing that in the Bay Area?
Where did the term “extra virgin olive oil” come
from? How can something be extra
virgin? It’s like being a little
pregnant: either you are or you are not.
You can’t be a little pregnant.
How about the common cold? Some
say it is not from being cold, or sitting around in wet clothing, but from
being exposed to germs. But we are
surrounded by germs all the time. Well,
then they say that if we are exposed to germs at a time when our resistance
happens to be low, then we can catch a cold.
But what would cause our resistance to be low? Sitting around in wet clothes? Others say that if we are exposed to germs
that we are not accustomed to, as in being surrounded by strangers in close
quarters, such as on an airplane flight, at a time when our resistance is low -
that is when we can catch a cold. But
why does our resistance have low periods in the first place? Who knows?
It seems like most people think they know. I’m good at knowing that I don’t know a lot
of things.
Most people in San Jose drink bottled water, believing
that our city water isn’t pure enough. I
must agree that it doesn’t taste very good, but it is probably safe to
drink. Some parents (who probably don’t
want to spend the money on bottled water for their kids) say that it is better
to expose the kids to a relatively safe level of impurities so that they can
build up tolerances and immunities. I
don’t know if that has validity or not.
Mom used to say that wearing sunglasses was a mistake, because you
weaken your eyes’ natural ability to handle the sunshine. Maybe she just didn’t want to spend the money
on sunglasses. I don’t know.
The Internet search
engines, like Google, will return thousands of responses in less than a second
to any key word of phrase entered. Not
only “How does it do that?” But how did all that data get in there in the first
place? I can’t imagine the size of the
army of people it would take to gather what seems like every know fact in the
world and enter it into a data base over a relatively short period of time.
I also wonder about the
white bread we used to eat in the 1950s versus the so-called multi-grain,
high-fiber products that are supposed to be so good for us. I heard a personal trainer telling a gym
member that the reason we have so much obesity and diabetes these days is that
the way our bread is made has changed.
She said that mothers back in the 1950s used to feed their kids regular
old white bread (ours did!), but neither the mothers nor the kids had weight
problems (true for us!). The way they
make wheat these days, she said, is causing lots of health problems. That almost sounds like a conspiracy
theory. Why would “they” do that? Sandy points out a family only had one car in
those days, and moms did not have jobs outside the home. Kids walked to school, and moms walked to the
stores. That’s why they did not get fat
or unhealthy from white bread. So I
wonder wherein the truth lies.
Similarly, the era of fast
foods began in 1959 with the first McDonald’s restaurant outlet. I recall when we were raising our kids how
the media was warning us that we were going to become a nation of overweight,
unhealthy people if this trend continued.
Well, we are. Is that what caused
it? What about the sedentary life style
of driving everywhere and sitting at our computers all day and our TVs all
night? It is a puzzlement. What about sugar? I was just reading that in 1822 the average
person consumed 45 grams of sugar every 5 days (approximately the amount in one
can of cola); in 2012 the average person consumed 756 grams (130 pounds) every
5 days. The explanation given is that
companies have found inexpensive ways to create sugar-based food additives that
make their products taste better. The
bottom line is that 70% of Americans are overweight, including 30% that are
obese.
Why do most Americans
drink coffee in the morning, instead of tea?
We originally came from Great Britain and other European countries,
where tea is all the rage. Didn’t the
early settlers bring that preference with them?
Most coffee is grown in South America.
How did coffee become the national habit of North America, instead of
tea?
I remember watching the front wheels of cars as they made
turns and wondering how in the world the drivers knew when the wheels were
pointing straight ahead again. It
probably wasn’t until I started learning to drive that I saw that steering a
car was about the same as riding a bike.
Did I look down at the front tire of my bike to see if I was going
straight? No! When I had my permit and was learning to
drive, I didn’t know that the turn indicators turned themselves off upon
completing a turn. I would blink for,
say, a left turn, complete the turn, and then try to turn the blinker off,
which caused it to blink for a right turn.
While the adult in the car was trying to teach me about the clutch,
braking, steering, accelerating, etc, I was totally distracted by a turn
indicator that I thought was malfunctioning.
More puzzlements: When a cell phone battery is new, some
people tell us to let it drain all the way down before recharging it, and then
give it a good, full charge; otherwise it won’t hold the charge for as long,
and you will need to recharge it more and more frequently and eventually will
need to keep it on the charger at all times. Others say that was true years
ago, but that the modern batteries don’t have that problem. You can keep them on the charger overnight,
or on the car charger while driving, and it will have no effect on the life of
the charge or the life of the battery.
Others, hearing that, say it is not true; that batteries have not
changed. These are the times I wish I
had more common sense, or at least was delusional enough to think for sure that
I knew the answer.
Another puzzlement for me is frequency of oil changes for
the car. The manufacturers say every
3,000 miles or 3 months. My auto
mechanic (who should know!) says 5,000.
I asked if the 3,000 mile guideline was an old concept from back when
cars were not built as well as modern cars.
He said, on the contrary, the manufacturers used to say 5,000 or even
7,000, but changed to 3,000. He didn’t
know why, but I suspect it has to do with their lawyers and insurers. Most auto maintenance people want the extra
business, so are not inclined to dissuade customers from the greater frequency
of oil changes. Not knowing what to
believe, I tend to shoot for 4,000 miles between oil changes. The wise old saying, “Oil is cheaper than
parts” sticks in my mind, too.
What about gasoline?
Some say it is all the same; that the major brands are no better than
the cheaper brands. Chevron says that
they add something called Techtron that keeps the car engine cleaner than if
you didn’t use it. I have used Chevron
for many years, partly because I know someone who used to work in management
for them and partly because I like their chevron logo. In the Army, the 3-stripe chevron on the
sleeve (identical to Chevron’s sign) indicated the first level of sergeant
(E-5). For E-6, E-7 and E-8 they added
one, two and three of what they called “rockers” on the bottom, but the chevron
stayed on top. I didn’t even like the
Army, so why am I attracted to the logo?
Who knows?
Dad was a diehard Texaco customer. He said he was convinced that his car ran
better on Texaco gas. I think he just
liked their giant star logo. He also
believed that it was wise to pay extra for the premium grade, because the
higher octane gas improved his gas mileage to an extent that more than paid for
itself. Of course, he would have needed
to run his car on several successive tanks of regular gas and carefully keep
track of his mileage, then switch and do the same thing with the premium gas in
order to make the comparison. I would be
surprised if he ever did that. At any
rate, the folks who go to the cheapest gas stations tend to laugh up their
sleeves at the rest of us who they think are paying more for essentially the
same thing.
My neighbor uses an Internet application called “Gas
Buddy” to find the cheapest gas while traveling. We were traveling with them once, and he
proudly pulled into a gas station that was completely swarming with cars
waiting in lines for their turns to save at the pump. I thought to myself that the savings would
need to be very good in order to justify the time and hassle involved. And what if the cheaper brands really are
inferior? That would represent a false
economy, indeed.
I’ve heard something similar about canned fruits and
vegetables. It is pointed out that the
huge trailer trucks hauling produce from the farms to the canneries are
carrying loads that are indistinguishable; the same loads of the same items go
to a variety of canneries for processing, packaging and labeling. The same stuff under the Del Monte label, for
example, is the same stuff as under any other label. Others say “No way.” Wherein lies the truth? As another puzzlement, why isn’t the advent
of the DVR changing the television landscape by discouraging advertisers? An analyst said recently that the only
programs we watch live anymore are sporting events and morning talk
shows. Why would a company pay the high rates for advertising spots on all
those other shows when they know a high percentage of viewers, like Sandy and
I, are fast-forwarding through the commercials?
Who knows?
Then there are some cause and effect type things where it
is not easy to be certain which is which.
It is not critical to know the answer to some of these, but it is
interesting to mull them over. For
example, at my age a lot of men are prompted by their prostate glands to get
out of bed and visit the bathroom two or more times per night. I don’t seem to have that problem. I probably average once per night, with zero
times per night running about equal to two times (10-20% of the time). So I often lay there wondering: am I awake
because I need to pee (did the biological need wake me up?), or am I laying
here thinking about visiting the bathroom because I am awake? It is obviously
not critical that I know the answer for sure, but it is an interesting
question.
I have never tried fasting, but I have read that the
hunger pangs come at usual mealtimes, but go away after an hour or so, only to
return at the next mealtime. So the
successful faster just needs to get through the usual mealtimes until the
hunger pangs subside. I also read that
these hunger pangs do not become more and more intense the more meals you miss,
but remain about the same and, I think, become less intense after about three
days. That is what enables someone to
fast for weeks at a time; after the first few days it gets easier. What has this got to do with peeing at night? I don’t know; maybe nothing. It is just interesting.
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