Vulcanized Elvis chickens flying business Class
I hope that you’re enjoying a wonderful beginning of June: a time of growth, happiness, good health and prosperity. In short, Vulcan wishes to you: “Live Long and Prosper.”
It’s been an exciting week here at Casa Carmen. Summer (2012) presents unique opportunities because all three of the family offspring will be in California. Darius has decided to work at UCSB (the University of California, Santa Barbara) and he will take the opportunity to work through the Tango Challenge at the incredible Oxygen Tango. In addition to the progeny confluence, Nazy and I will celebrate our 40th(!) wedding anniversary in July. Clearly the st✭rs were aligning. The head of the family decided that Naz and Dan had to visit California. Accordingly, I..
“You? Head of the family, Dan? “Who exactly is the head?” Nazy asked.
“I think it’s self-evident, my dear,” I replied diplomatically. “Me, of course,” I thought.
“Humor me.” Nazy replied.
“I simply agreed with your suggestion..”
“Suggestion?”
“Demand.”
Thus empowered, I turned to the Internet, anxious to utilize my plethora of frequent flyer miles on Swiss and United. [My bargaining position would have been better if I had all the miles on one airline.] After a fruitless search, I adroitly deployed managerial delegation skills.
“It’s hopeless, Nazy! There are no frequent flyer-enabled flights in the high season.”
“Did you call them?”
“Do you really think that a person will discover a deal that’s not on the internet?”
“Not if you call them, but..”
“She is really going to be surprised,” I thought. “The only available flight was a United economy flight for 250,000 miles (roundtrip; per person). I’ll check with Expedia for purchase options while she wastes her time on the phone.”
While I considered expensive roundtrip options offered on the comparison sites, Nazy was smoozing with a Swiss clerk:
“....Yes, I’m sure we’ve met. You’re in Basel, right? We had a great time at Fastnacht - it’s a wonderful city. We really need to get to California. My son has escaped from Lebanon. Swiss has been so kind to us. My husband always chooses...”
After she finished exchanging recipes, Nazy secured the return portion of our trip - for 50,000 miles (business class). There was nothing available for the outbound leg.
“See?” Nazy exalted. “That’s how it’s done.”
“We still have to get there,” I muttered. Nazy looked, eh, glared at me. “I will call United,”
After substantial discussion, a solution was found. We could get to Los Angeles for 125,000 miles (each). Unfortunately, I had only 220,000 miles. However, we could transfer Nazy’s 28,000 miles to top up the account and we could buy 2000 extra miles for $60.
“What about the taxes?” I asked.
“Ah. Yes. $375. Total. You just have to log on and transfer your miles.”
Unfortunately, United charged $15 for each 1000 miles transferred. “So,” I explained, “this ‘free’ ticket will cost us $855 - and a quarter of a million miles.”
Nazy sighed. Nazy frowned. “I’ll call Rosemary.”
“Rosemary?”
“The Swiss agent in Basel. Maybe something has opened up.”
“And maybe the Queen Elizabeth will sing Hip-Hop at her diamond jubilee,” I thought. Undaunted by negativism, Nazy was able to get us to the States without expending any additional miles. Better still, the flights were on Swiss business class.
“See?” She crowed.
“Well, if I had known you’d be satisfied with 2nd class flights..”
“Business class, Dan. Going. And returning.”
“It’s not 1st class, so...,” I replied triumphantly and boldly. (And stupidly.)
This week we visited our friends Joel and Christine, who were vacationing in Montpont-en-Bresse, France. Bresse is the chicken capitol of France. The chickens of Bresse were the first animals to have an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée. These unique fowl are white - with blue feet. They taste good. (The chickens, not the feet.)
Because of unplanned, but fortuitous, timing our visit occurred simultaneously with the annual Bresse Chicken Festival. It was a chance to take part in a typically rural French celebration.
We followed the crowd to a large stage. The entertainment began with belly dancers. “It appears,” I thought, “that there has been more migration from Algeria than advertised.” The belly dancers were followed by:
“An Elvis impersonator!” Nazy exclaimed. “It’s just like a 4th of July celebration in Memphis.”
“We had the real Elvis in Memphis.” I replied.
Joel and Christine had located a wonderful countryside house, a converted mill. The rapidly running water that powered the mill was still flowing under the house. Joel and I discussed business issues while he grilled Bresse Chicken outdoors.
“What do you think about the JP Morgan fiasco?” I asked.
“They made ‘Risk Management’ a profit center, Dan. The result was inevitable.”
“Foolishly I believed that the problem occurred because the bank was too big and complex to manage. If I had used Occam’s Razor in my analysis, I would have come to the simpler conclusion: bank management was stupid and greedy,” I thought.
I described Darius’ teaching approach at The American University of Beirut. “His fnial exam was an essay. I told him it was too hard to grade, but he assigned it because social media and internet-enabled students think that writing means grabbing semi-random text from the web, pasting it together and adding a title. Darius..”
“Is right,” Joel agreed. “People are losing the ability to create. If this continues, the internet will run out of content.”
“There’s already a content-quality deficit,” I replied. “The internet has proven that the old adage about an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards will eventually create Shakespearean-level prose,” I thought.
Joel also noted problems with the outdoor grill.
“It looks great,” he noted. “But it doesn’t draw.”
“Sounds like a French design,” I thought.
“And the charcoal burns fast and cool.”
“Voila!”
Joel navigated through the challenges by preparing a great meal. We also enjoyed a beautiful sunset. More about our trip in next week’s edition of The Weekly Letter. Photos from the trip to France available here.
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