Over the years, I have noticed some expectations others have of me once they learn that I am British. They don’t always conform to what British people think is their reputation.
One thing I find consistently funny is about taking tea with milk. Actually, I do take tea with milk, though I am happy to go without. But somehow whenever I order tea from someone who knows I am British, they make a point about the milk.
I wonder how this particular reputation became so strong. Once I developed a theory. Perhaps there is a standard textbook for learning English, used in many countries. Perhaps, in a very early chapter, a British person orders tea, and asks for milk in it. Perhaps the textbook makes some general remark about Brits preferring tea with milk.
I suppose it is possible. There has to be something powerful to have created this reputation. I can almost guarantee a knowing smile and short conversation, anywhere in the world. Probably that is how the French got the reputation for striped shirts, garlic and bicycles.
More recently, people like John Cleese or Ricky Gervais have a lot to answer for. Another thing Brits are known for is a dark humour, cleverness or wit. At least this one is positive. Luckily I fit the stereotype again, or at least I think I do.
In my experience, the people typically having the most wit are the Irish. Many times I have been in Irish company, from all walks of life, and been astonished at the pace and ingenuity of the wit, of almost everyone. I wonder where that comes from. They certainly have a very social culture, which must help.
Other British things are bad (or at least careless) dress sense and bad food – despite the plethora of British chefs (many of whom I can confirm are picking up good royalties from US TV). Once again, as a lazy dresser and hopeless cook, I can count myself typical.
Maybe the most common impression of the Brits is about our reserve. We are seen as formal, snobbish, awkward in discussing emotions, and to use language to avoid plain speaking. We are also sometimes suspected of deviousness.
The deviousness completely contradicts the self-image of the Brits, who talk a lot of the British sense of fair play. I must admit that I am with the foreigners on this one, and have often been embarrassed by British sportspeople and politicians.
I just finished a great book, Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It is a history of that city, and the overwhelming impression is embarrassment for the human race. Before reading this I thought the bible story of Salome putting John the Baptist’s head on a plate was either false or extreme. Now I learn that this has been the norm for human behaviour, for three thousand years and pretty well up to the present. No wonder the politics there is so fraught.
The British come out no better than anyone else. British efforts in Jerusalem have been devious and naïve. Being an island and relatively ethnically homogenous group, I think Brits underestimate the historical complexity of other lands – that would also explain some of the British history in Ireland. But Brits also seem to listen badly, to believe in their superiority, and to be willing to cheat to impose their ideas. The empire might have a lot to do with that. At least the French come out even worse! To be fair, no-one comes out very well.
On this group of traits, I find I am often accused of being counter to the stereotype, though I recently learned that I am seen as formal and uptight on first impression. But I do speak my mind plainly, and that often surprised my European colleagues in Shell. “Very Dutch for a Brit” was something I heard many times – and took as a compliment.
Which brings me to the last trait, the inspiration for this blog in the first place. Queuing. Or as the Americans term it, standing in line.
I’ve never really discerned much difference in national attitudes to queuing. No-one likes it very much, why should they? Perhaps the Southern races queue with less discipline than the protestant North. That would be consistent with other parts of their character. But I don’t see the British as particularly attracted to queues, as the folklore seems to imply.
I can claim some new expertise though. My own attitude to queues has been tested to its limits in New York. Wow, I have spent more time in line here than ever in my life. I think it is just due to the scale of the place, combined with the normal chores of starting out in a country. Wow, it starts at the immigration lines at the airports.
Being on the roads involves some amazing queues. I am generally impressed with how things move here, and take my hat off to the traffic planners. Under huge pressure, they have really put effort into details like the phasing of traffic lights, and it pays off. But the system is still fragile, and if there is an accident or bad weather or some other disruption, the consequences are predictably huge. Hence the queues.
Then there is anything popular. In our first weeks we discovered free summer concerts in Central Park. What we didn’t realise was that everyone else discovered them as well, leading to crazy queues, and most of us ending up listening from the park outside rather than inside the venue. It was still fun, despite the well-known disrespect of New Yorkers – chatting loudly the whole time. We have also discovered a van that comes to Forest Hills on a Sunday to sell Belgian waffles. But so has the rest of Forest Hills. The lines are as legendary as the waffles.
Sometimes it is just the distances. Coney Island on the subway is a direct train for us, at an amazing price of $2,25. The only problem – it is forty stops! Can you recall a time you sat on any train while it stopped forty times? Maybe it is not a queue, but by the end it sure feels like one. (By the way, there was nothing there once we made it).
We hired a car for one day. Shame we chose Labor day weekend. Budget, in their wisdom, seems to have forgotten that fact, even though their computers probably told them they had a lot of orders, just like always on a holiday. We stood in line in the sun for an hour and three quarters. Many people in the line had things like weddings to get to, and I was impressed that there was no riot, and the staff were brilliant – perhaps that is why there was no riot.
The Budget experience gave another hint about American lines. Occasionally some posh bastard would show up and jump the queue, on the flimsy grounds that they had paid a bit more or had a loyalty card. New York has many lines, but I suspect some people spend more time in lines than others.
Which brings me to the Department of Motor Vehicles. So far I have made three visits. You queue (out of the door, almost into the elevator) for an initial assessment, which qualifies you (perhaps) to join a range of other queues. Many of the staff seem to have role models in the military. I think I will have to visit three more times to be become a fully qualified driver in the USA, despite my almost unblemished and lengthy international driving record. I now psyche myself up, forcing myself into a good and fatalistic mood before entering. Wow, you see a lot of angry, almost desperate people at the DMV.
Add in the experience that Time Warner Cable needed me to stay at home four whole days to succeed in giving us TV and internet (how do people cope with that if they have jobs?), and you get a picture of someone getting used to lines.
Actually, I think I am rare good Brit in this respect, as I am quite good in a line. I am usually patient, happy in my own company, and generally remember to bring a book or newspaper. And I enjoy observing the people. In New York, someone will always cause a scene, New Yorkers are rarely shy and retiring sorts. So perhaps, after all, there is something about the Brits and queues, our reputation might be justified.
Now, can I spend less of the next ten weeks in lines please?
Friday, September 14, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
A Sleepy at the Wheel?
It is fascinating to see how retail has evolved differently in the USA compared with Europe, both by looking at outlets and at advertising.
In New York, medical advertising is a lot more prominent, and so are specialist medical practices and pharmacies. I expected this, as a consequence of how the US health market is lucrative for providers. There are also quite a few adverts suggesting you start a lawsuit for medical malpractice. Perhaps as a consequence, ads for drugs are very funny, since they spend as much commentary telling you why NOT to take the product as they do promoting it.
Outside, there are many more banks, with big branches, and many more petrol stations, usually nasty little dealer-owned outlets with service bays attached.
In both Europe and the US, mobile telecoms has become a huge category, both in store space and in advertising. I can be bemused just as easily by Verizon here as I was by Vodafone there!
One category much more developed in the USA is personal grooming, specifically nails and massage type places. They are everywhere, and either people must be buying these services week after week or most of them must be losing money.
What are there less of? Shoe shops is one category. Shoes are traditionally a high margin line in Europe, with many outlets on every high street. Here, shoe shops seem to have retreated into malls.
In the Netherlands, high streets are still very buoyant, due to various factors such as cycling, kitchen sizes and government policy. In the UK, high streets nowadays are bleak places, filled with cheap eateries and charity shops. Everything else has been killed by major supermarkets and malls. These abominations exist in the US as well, but, at least in New York City, small shopping areas have survived, though with many categories missing. Apart from the grooming shops, launderettes (many homes do not have washing machines), small general stores and eateries, you see a lot of small places catering to minorities, such as kosher bakeries. Whole districts have become clusters for particular immigrant groups, from Greeks to Koreans. There is even a Philippine quarter in Queens!
But some differences defy logic, or at least my logic. My favourite is a company called Sleepy’s, who sell mattresses in New York and other North east states. I don’t recall watching any advert for mattresses in the UK recently, nor to my knowledge are there many shops left specialising in mattresses. Like in many categories, IKEA has killed most competition that is not online. And surely this is a good category to go online, as retail stores need spacious inventory while the customer still has to get the product home from there. Furthermore a mattress seems the very opposite of an impulse purchase.
Not here. Sleepy’s are everywhere. Watch a TV show, and there may be a Sleepy’s ad in most advert breaks. Ride on the subway or bus, and you’ll see outside advertising. And you’ll also see quite a few physical stores, even in super-expensive Manhattan. My wife and I are laughing about it now, playing a game of spot the Sleepy’s.
So how can this be? An invisible category in Europe, with seeming good reason to be invisible, is ubiquitous here. I did a little research.
First, to Google. Sleepy’s is privately owned, by a single family who are now in third or fourth generation. Profit figures are therefore not available, but I did discover that sales in one recent year were $790 million, and they had 800 stores, a growing number.
$790m made sense. I guessed that people would buy maybe 3 to 5 new mattresses in a lifetime, and, extrapolating to the market of North East US, that implies a category of $2-3bn annual sales, so these busy retailers might have 30-40% of that. Reasonable.
But then work it out per store. $1m annual turnover might equate to weekly sales of 30 mattresses. That is one every two hours, from these huge stores with high inventory costs.
To check, I visited one near me. It was indeed a huge store filled with mattresses (at least on the second floor so slightly cheaper rental), and with long opening hours. I was not entirely surprised to see just one forlorn salesman, and not a single potential customer. I felt very sorry for the guy as I was making my excuses to leave without so much as a sniff of purchase!
Now some more maths. Sleepy’s is just a retailer not a manufacturer, and discounts a lot, so let us assume a 20% gross margin. Each store must have 8-10 full time staff equivalents, costing say $150,000, and the same costs in rent, utilities and so on. So a store has $200,000 of gross margin and $300,000 of costs. And then, there is the huge advertising budget to fund.
I am defeated. Either my assumptions are way out, or I just don’t understand the category, or the poor Acker family are pouring a small fortune into a business that can’t make money. Possibly all of the above are true. Any other ideas?
What lessons can we learn from comparing the markets? There are several.
First, regulation is always critical. Sectors like banks will evolve very much depending on their regulatory environment and the degree of cut-throat competition, itself heavily influenced by regulation. By that reckoning, regulators here have generally done a bad job, at least in banking, petrol retailing and medical supplies. Each of these sectors looks incredibly fat here.
Next, look at demographics. New York will be more densely populated than most of the USA, with lower dependence on cars. That will explain that Houston to my eyes was one enormous ugly retail parking lot, whereas New York has so far avoided that fate. Add in the diversity of residents, and typical home sizes (kitchens, fridges, washing machines) and you can find reasons for many other differences.
Another lesson is that habits die hard. Things are partly as they are in the USA because that is the way they always have been. Change happens (look at mobile phones) but always more slowly than pure logic would suggest, so differences also perpetuate even if not strictly logical. If you doubt that, just look at the notes and coins. How come Americans still have paper dollars and all notes look the same? Answer – because that it the way it has always been, people resist change, and politicians don’t like annoying core voters.
But my favourite lesson is the one from Sleepy’s. You can explain many things, but some defy explanation. Entrepreneurs and customers have many motives you don’t read about in economics text books, and strange outcomes can result, often for many years. Markets are far from perfect, and we should celebrate that, as it provides glorious diversity as customers and great opportunities as entrepreneurs and investors.
Nonetheless, if I were investing in a sector in Europe, I think I would plump for personal grooming rather than mattress retailing.
In New York, medical advertising is a lot more prominent, and so are specialist medical practices and pharmacies. I expected this, as a consequence of how the US health market is lucrative for providers. There are also quite a few adverts suggesting you start a lawsuit for medical malpractice. Perhaps as a consequence, ads for drugs are very funny, since they spend as much commentary telling you why NOT to take the product as they do promoting it.
Outside, there are many more banks, with big branches, and many more petrol stations, usually nasty little dealer-owned outlets with service bays attached.
In both Europe and the US, mobile telecoms has become a huge category, both in store space and in advertising. I can be bemused just as easily by Verizon here as I was by Vodafone there!
One category much more developed in the USA is personal grooming, specifically nails and massage type places. They are everywhere, and either people must be buying these services week after week or most of them must be losing money.
What are there less of? Shoe shops is one category. Shoes are traditionally a high margin line in Europe, with many outlets on every high street. Here, shoe shops seem to have retreated into malls.
In the Netherlands, high streets are still very buoyant, due to various factors such as cycling, kitchen sizes and government policy. In the UK, high streets nowadays are bleak places, filled with cheap eateries and charity shops. Everything else has been killed by major supermarkets and malls. These abominations exist in the US as well, but, at least in New York City, small shopping areas have survived, though with many categories missing. Apart from the grooming shops, launderettes (many homes do not have washing machines), small general stores and eateries, you see a lot of small places catering to minorities, such as kosher bakeries. Whole districts have become clusters for particular immigrant groups, from Greeks to Koreans. There is even a Philippine quarter in Queens!
But some differences defy logic, or at least my logic. My favourite is a company called Sleepy’s, who sell mattresses in New York and other North east states. I don’t recall watching any advert for mattresses in the UK recently, nor to my knowledge are there many shops left specialising in mattresses. Like in many categories, IKEA has killed most competition that is not online. And surely this is a good category to go online, as retail stores need spacious inventory while the customer still has to get the product home from there. Furthermore a mattress seems the very opposite of an impulse purchase.
Not here. Sleepy’s are everywhere. Watch a TV show, and there may be a Sleepy’s ad in most advert breaks. Ride on the subway or bus, and you’ll see outside advertising. And you’ll also see quite a few physical stores, even in super-expensive Manhattan. My wife and I are laughing about it now, playing a game of spot the Sleepy’s.
So how can this be? An invisible category in Europe, with seeming good reason to be invisible, is ubiquitous here. I did a little research.
First, to Google. Sleepy’s is privately owned, by a single family who are now in third or fourth generation. Profit figures are therefore not available, but I did discover that sales in one recent year were $790 million, and they had 800 stores, a growing number.
$790m made sense. I guessed that people would buy maybe 3 to 5 new mattresses in a lifetime, and, extrapolating to the market of North East US, that implies a category of $2-3bn annual sales, so these busy retailers might have 30-40% of that. Reasonable.
But then work it out per store. $1m annual turnover might equate to weekly sales of 30 mattresses. That is one every two hours, from these huge stores with high inventory costs.
To check, I visited one near me. It was indeed a huge store filled with mattresses (at least on the second floor so slightly cheaper rental), and with long opening hours. I was not entirely surprised to see just one forlorn salesman, and not a single potential customer. I felt very sorry for the guy as I was making my excuses to leave without so much as a sniff of purchase!
Now some more maths. Sleepy’s is just a retailer not a manufacturer, and discounts a lot, so let us assume a 20% gross margin. Each store must have 8-10 full time staff equivalents, costing say $150,000, and the same costs in rent, utilities and so on. So a store has $200,000 of gross margin and $300,000 of costs. And then, there is the huge advertising budget to fund.
I am defeated. Either my assumptions are way out, or I just don’t understand the category, or the poor Acker family are pouring a small fortune into a business that can’t make money. Possibly all of the above are true. Any other ideas?
What lessons can we learn from comparing the markets? There are several.
First, regulation is always critical. Sectors like banks will evolve very much depending on their regulatory environment and the degree of cut-throat competition, itself heavily influenced by regulation. By that reckoning, regulators here have generally done a bad job, at least in banking, petrol retailing and medical supplies. Each of these sectors looks incredibly fat here.
Next, look at demographics. New York will be more densely populated than most of the USA, with lower dependence on cars. That will explain that Houston to my eyes was one enormous ugly retail parking lot, whereas New York has so far avoided that fate. Add in the diversity of residents, and typical home sizes (kitchens, fridges, washing machines) and you can find reasons for many other differences.
Another lesson is that habits die hard. Things are partly as they are in the USA because that is the way they always have been. Change happens (look at mobile phones) but always more slowly than pure logic would suggest, so differences also perpetuate even if not strictly logical. If you doubt that, just look at the notes and coins. How come Americans still have paper dollars and all notes look the same? Answer – because that it the way it has always been, people resist change, and politicians don’t like annoying core voters.
But my favourite lesson is the one from Sleepy’s. You can explain many things, but some defy explanation. Entrepreneurs and customers have many motives you don’t read about in economics text books, and strange outcomes can result, often for many years. Markets are far from perfect, and we should celebrate that, as it provides glorious diversity as customers and great opportunities as entrepreneurs and investors.
Nonetheless, if I were investing in a sector in Europe, I think I would plump for personal grooming rather than mattress retailing.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Lost arts
Last weekend I had the pleasure of being driven from Buffalo Airport to Toronto. It was night time, and neither driver nor navigator had completed the route before, but they did have the benefit of two GPS machines. Supposedly one worked better in Canada, the other better in the USA. I was tired, and vowed to keep my mouth shut.
Maybe predictably, the two GPS’s proved a dubious blessing. They took time to calculate routes, they didn’t seem to know landmarks, they were for ever blaring out “cancel” like a couple of Daleks, and even when they gave out routes they contradicted each other.
Somehow, we made it to Toronto, thanks to a calm and careful driver. But we took a couple of wrong turns, went over a different border crossing than the one we wished, and had some pauses at the side of the road for the GPS’s to get their breath back.
From my vantage point in the back seat, I think I could have avoided all the missteps, despite also never having completed the route (except once in reverse). Often there were helpful road signs. When there were not, simply knowing roughly where North was would have done the trick, or heading for somewhere which seemed sure to be in the right direction.
The reason the driver and navigator missed all the clues were the GPS’s. They were so focused on the machines that they weren’t really tuned into to other available data. Later, I wondered if it was even more fundamental. Having become used to driving with GPS, perhaps they had lost the art of being able to navigate any other way.
I am a bit of a navigation nerd, being a mathematician, having had to learn to get around strange cities on foot and by car, and with a bit of network planning experience for Shell. This has also helped me in New York, with its scale and its variety of transport options. One thing I have really enjoyed is discovering the city on foot and bus and subway.
I sense these arts are disappearing, and the GPS experience offers a clue as to why. Even mobile phones are partly responsible, with their ability to google up support and call friends. I am not saying these are bad things – indeed how did we ever manage to complete appointments at unfamiliar private residences before the days of mobile phones? But I am saying it is a shame if a valuable life skill is lost. Technology does not always work and is not always available, especially in emergencies. And people looking lost are more vulnerable to pickpockets.
For me, geography at school would have been more useful if map reading had replaced learning capitals. Rote learning has become increasingly redundant anyway, due to the internet. We need a new skill now to know the capital of Honduras, rather than the memory of old. This made me think about other skills that had been lost, and which ones should be mourned.
IT itself has seen the biggest changes. I actually came from a very narrow generation who learned to program computers, and was taught all sorts of technical stuff about how computers worked (which I then forgot again). Computers were just come in, but they were large machines rather than personal ones, and it was believed that we would all need to be able to give them instructions in strange codes. Then IBM, Microsoft and Apple changed all that. The nerds in shops and marketing departments haven’t completely dropped the bit and byte speak yet (why not?), but the idea of anyone but a specialist writing programs now seems very quaint. I wonder how IT education has responded? What I hope is that time is spent on stuff like how to navigate a web menu to buy things, how to research information quickly and reliably, and perhaps on creating websites. The former two have become critical life skills now.
Language and writing has changed too. Is accurate spelling a lost art, with spellchecker everywhere? And does it matter? Perhaps we should not mourn the need for mastering spelling too much, especially us English speakers with all our exceptions. The other day I had to write a hand-written letter, and a proper one, not just a one-pager instructing some financial institution of an address change. I found the actual physical act of writing difficult, and the letter construction was not simple either. For me, it is sad that these arts are being lost, as letters are powerful ways to communicate. With text, even alphabets are curtailed. It is efficient, and perhaps it is only sentiment that makes me mourn the traditional methods.
My Mum used to knit a lot. Who does now? It is so cheap to buy finished products, that the only benefit of knitting now is as a creative pastime. Darning does not even have that merit. I think Mum also used to use a mangle, though I am not all that sure what for. This sort of lost art probably doesn’t require us to do anything but celebrate.
What other arts have been lost? Dancing is one that was almost lost in some societies, but is gradually being found again, thanks partly to Strictly (Dancing with the Stars here). A regret of mine is that my generation were the ones who lost the joy of dancing, instead just jumping up and down. I have gained a lot of pleasure from ballroom and Latin lessons these last two years, and recommend them wholeheartedly.
Last month I taught our twelve-year-old how to tie a tie. I enjoyed that. Then I wondered how old I was when I learned, and how many times in the last ten years I had actually worn a tie. Probably more often than he will in how whole lifetime. We need not mourn that sort of lost art, I think, and there are probably many more female equivalents we can be grateful to see the back of. The tie was actually needed for a wedding, but this month I also attended a funeral, indeed had to help to organise one. My sister and I needed help with everything. I wonder if this sort of skill was handed down more effectively in the past?
While on the subject of kids, this month we were delayed four hours waiting for a flight, and neither child had any electronics with them. That made me think two distinct arts might be in the process of being lost. The kids were less resourceful than those of a generation ago in this situation, having been brought up with electronics available almost everywhere. And the parents were also less resourceful. I remember Mum having all sorts of games and gadgets up her sleeve for that sort of eventuality. We struggled but managed, while some of the other parents in the lounge seemed even more lost than we were.
Finally, an art that is still relevant, but I don’t understand why, is driving a stick shift car. Why do we still have these things? Automatic gearboxes make better decisions than humans nowadays and are more economical. Yet many people insist on carrying on making driving more cumbersome than it needs to be by using a gear stick. Well done USA, that is something you have got right, I think.
There must be many similar lost arts, and newly required arts to replace them. Some of the lost ones will be preserved, and hopefully the most creative and satisfying might make a comeback, like dancing. I hope our educators get the balance right between responding to change and retaining skills that, though less critical than before, can still make a difference.
Next time I am in the back seat with a GPS as competition, I wonder if I’ll still be able to keep my mouth shut? Maybe the next generation would find it even harder, as keeping ones mouth shut might itself be a vanishing art, not that I am generally effective at that one myself.
Maybe predictably, the two GPS’s proved a dubious blessing. They took time to calculate routes, they didn’t seem to know landmarks, they were for ever blaring out “cancel” like a couple of Daleks, and even when they gave out routes they contradicted each other.
Somehow, we made it to Toronto, thanks to a calm and careful driver. But we took a couple of wrong turns, went over a different border crossing than the one we wished, and had some pauses at the side of the road for the GPS’s to get their breath back.
From my vantage point in the back seat, I think I could have avoided all the missteps, despite also never having completed the route (except once in reverse). Often there were helpful road signs. When there were not, simply knowing roughly where North was would have done the trick, or heading for somewhere which seemed sure to be in the right direction.
The reason the driver and navigator missed all the clues were the GPS’s. They were so focused on the machines that they weren’t really tuned into to other available data. Later, I wondered if it was even more fundamental. Having become used to driving with GPS, perhaps they had lost the art of being able to navigate any other way.
I am a bit of a navigation nerd, being a mathematician, having had to learn to get around strange cities on foot and by car, and with a bit of network planning experience for Shell. This has also helped me in New York, with its scale and its variety of transport options. One thing I have really enjoyed is discovering the city on foot and bus and subway.
I sense these arts are disappearing, and the GPS experience offers a clue as to why. Even mobile phones are partly responsible, with their ability to google up support and call friends. I am not saying these are bad things – indeed how did we ever manage to complete appointments at unfamiliar private residences before the days of mobile phones? But I am saying it is a shame if a valuable life skill is lost. Technology does not always work and is not always available, especially in emergencies. And people looking lost are more vulnerable to pickpockets.
For me, geography at school would have been more useful if map reading had replaced learning capitals. Rote learning has become increasingly redundant anyway, due to the internet. We need a new skill now to know the capital of Honduras, rather than the memory of old. This made me think about other skills that had been lost, and which ones should be mourned.
IT itself has seen the biggest changes. I actually came from a very narrow generation who learned to program computers, and was taught all sorts of technical stuff about how computers worked (which I then forgot again). Computers were just come in, but they were large machines rather than personal ones, and it was believed that we would all need to be able to give them instructions in strange codes. Then IBM, Microsoft and Apple changed all that. The nerds in shops and marketing departments haven’t completely dropped the bit and byte speak yet (why not?), but the idea of anyone but a specialist writing programs now seems very quaint. I wonder how IT education has responded? What I hope is that time is spent on stuff like how to navigate a web menu to buy things, how to research information quickly and reliably, and perhaps on creating websites. The former two have become critical life skills now.
Language and writing has changed too. Is accurate spelling a lost art, with spellchecker everywhere? And does it matter? Perhaps we should not mourn the need for mastering spelling too much, especially us English speakers with all our exceptions. The other day I had to write a hand-written letter, and a proper one, not just a one-pager instructing some financial institution of an address change. I found the actual physical act of writing difficult, and the letter construction was not simple either. For me, it is sad that these arts are being lost, as letters are powerful ways to communicate. With text, even alphabets are curtailed. It is efficient, and perhaps it is only sentiment that makes me mourn the traditional methods.
My Mum used to knit a lot. Who does now? It is so cheap to buy finished products, that the only benefit of knitting now is as a creative pastime. Darning does not even have that merit. I think Mum also used to use a mangle, though I am not all that sure what for. This sort of lost art probably doesn’t require us to do anything but celebrate.
What other arts have been lost? Dancing is one that was almost lost in some societies, but is gradually being found again, thanks partly to Strictly (Dancing with the Stars here). A regret of mine is that my generation were the ones who lost the joy of dancing, instead just jumping up and down. I have gained a lot of pleasure from ballroom and Latin lessons these last two years, and recommend them wholeheartedly.
Last month I taught our twelve-year-old how to tie a tie. I enjoyed that. Then I wondered how old I was when I learned, and how many times in the last ten years I had actually worn a tie. Probably more often than he will in how whole lifetime. We need not mourn that sort of lost art, I think, and there are probably many more female equivalents we can be grateful to see the back of. The tie was actually needed for a wedding, but this month I also attended a funeral, indeed had to help to organise one. My sister and I needed help with everything. I wonder if this sort of skill was handed down more effectively in the past?
While on the subject of kids, this month we were delayed four hours waiting for a flight, and neither child had any electronics with them. That made me think two distinct arts might be in the process of being lost. The kids were less resourceful than those of a generation ago in this situation, having been brought up with electronics available almost everywhere. And the parents were also less resourceful. I remember Mum having all sorts of games and gadgets up her sleeve for that sort of eventuality. We struggled but managed, while some of the other parents in the lounge seemed even more lost than we were.
Finally, an art that is still relevant, but I don’t understand why, is driving a stick shift car. Why do we still have these things? Automatic gearboxes make better decisions than humans nowadays and are more economical. Yet many people insist on carrying on making driving more cumbersome than it needs to be by using a gear stick. Well done USA, that is something you have got right, I think.
There must be many similar lost arts, and newly required arts to replace them. Some of the lost ones will be preserved, and hopefully the most creative and satisfying might make a comeback, like dancing. I hope our educators get the balance right between responding to change and retaining skills that, though less critical than before, can still make a difference.
Next time I am in the back seat with a GPS as competition, I wonder if I’ll still be able to keep my mouth shut? Maybe the next generation would find it even harder, as keeping ones mouth shut might itself be a vanishing art, not that I am generally effective at that one myself.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Fair Fines
It seems Americans are obsessed by taxes, and New Yorkers are additionally obsessed by tickets.
I am amazed how often tax comes up in everyday conversation over here. In Europe, we don’t like tax, but generally we let it happen. I have a general saying that people who complain about tax, specifically income or wealth tax, have too much money. The more you have, the more you pay. So suck it up.
Here, it is different. There are many possible reasons why. Perhaps wealth here is something you brag about, and tax conversation is a good way to flaunt your wealth. Somehow, many taxes seem more in your face here. Sales tax is added on at the point of sale. To me, this is crazy. An item will be labelled at a cost of ten dollars, but at the checkout it rings at ten dollars eighty something. So it is much harder to budget your overall spending, and, if you pay in cash, you end up with pockets full of change (and loads of paper single dollars as well. Why?)
For me, this flaunts a basic principal of consumer rights. A price on an item should be its price. But Americans seem ready to accept it, and some even express a wish to know what the tax is. Some say that because tax varies between states, the retailer has to do it at the point of sale, but that strikes me as BS. Tax varying by state is another way tax assumes a higher profile and higher everyday concern.
The retailers lobby may be one reason this regime remains acceptable. But I also suspect the politics. It suits the right that tax is always top of the agenda. In some ways that is good, as in Europe it can be the opposite – there everyone wants everything from the state, and don’t think of the trade-off involved. Here it is the opposite. No one accepts tax, and they don’t link that to poor schools or infrastructure or elderly care. On neither continent is there much intelligent debate. And it also makes point-scoring very easy, suiting the side with the big advertising budget.
Last weekend in Atlanta there were referenda where the proposition was a sales tax for a limited time to be spent exclusively on improving the transport infrastructure. They all got voted down. It becomes very hard here to complete any project for the common good. No wonder the roads are all full of holes, and the bridges and tunnels feel unsafe. At least in New York City, there is a well-functioning system overall.
Anyway, as well as taxes, New Yorkers love to moan about tickets. So far, I haven’t got any, not least because I am not driving here yet. But the belief is that the police treat tickets as fair game to raise money, and give them out very loosely. And fail to pay, and you yet loaded with interest, and pretty soon a ban.
I may change my mind when I suffer a glut of tickets, but overall I am in favour of the approach. There are so many police on the streets here all the time, raising money is one way to make use of them. And rules are there for a reason, so we should not complain if we get fined for violating them.
How many times have I been delayed for an hour or so in London because some rich guy chose to park illegally and created a bottleneck? Fine him, say I, and at least we all get some compensation for our inconvenience. If the result is more fines, then presumably we can have good enough service, without higher taxes.
The London example raises the issue of differential fines. The reason the rich guy parks illegally is that the fine is peanuts to him. To get around that, the authorities in London started towing cars away, reasoning that this would hurt the rich guy more, since time matters more to him than money. Good move, except that the very rich guy then pays some contractor to retrieve his vehicle for him.
In Finland, I understand fines are proportional to the ability to pay. I remember this being introduced in Britain years ago, and then withdrawn again almost immediately. The elite managed to find a few old ladies who was fined thousands of pounds for a minor offence, and used them to turn public opinion.
Indeed it would be difficult to implement this system in practice, and well done to the Finns for persevering – no doubt the wonderful public IT systems there help. Without that, the debate about what income counts or wealth counts, foreign income, who owns the car and so on could make things very complicated. Unlike for the Tobin tax, this is a fair argument against a variable scheme. But hardly insurmountable, I would think. The Dutch have become smart at making fines variable depending on previous offences. Variable for some income/wealth coefficient should not be too hard to devise. That might deter the guy on Putney High Street – as long as he wasn’t a diplomat, which seems to be another insurmountable problem – hard for me to understand as insurmountable, and then I suspect some other elite conspiracy.
Joe Public is not the only one worrying about fines just now. The summer has seen many corporate fines, with more to follow. Barclays, HSBC, Google, Airlines, Glaxo and the rest are starting to pay dearly for their indiscretions. First, I often wonder where such fines go. They can be eye-watering amounts, and could help plug some debt holes just now.
Again, in principle I support these fines. In the Economist, Schumpeter argued recently that businesses will do whatever they can get away with, trading off risk against benefit. I am not quite so cynical, but I still favour harsh sanctions. If the regime is fair and consistent, it only creates a level playing field and protects the consumer.
Competition law fines started to become an issue at Shell a few years ago. A Dutch EU commissioner put a strong regime in place, including fines according to ability to pay and previous record. They also included the wonderful incentive of penalties imposed on individual managers not just their corporations. Ouch. Shell was heading into the hundreds of millions, and it had an impact. We all had lots of training, and legal scrutiny became stronger. Training beforehand had seemed half hearted, but not after the fines got nasty. Well done Nellie Kroes.
Businesses also have to worry about a secondary quasi-fine that arises from lawsuits, and a tertiary one in the form of reputation loss. Barclays and the other LIBOR miscreants seem very vulnerable to these now. I often thought Shell under-estimated this type of risk, perhaps as a European rather than a US company. I once did a study assessing the risks to a business of Shell offering services to other manufacturers, and I concluded that litigation and reputation was the biggest risk category. We could earn a few thousand dollars for some advice, but what if, either because the advice was flawed or the customer mis-applied it, the result was some catastrophe? For our own operations, we had to accept these risks, but why extend them outside the company boundary, for only a small reward? Like most of my advice, this was duly ignored – probably quite correctly.
I foresee an era when fines, litigation and reputation become even more important drivers to business success, as regulators and lawyers step up their game, supported by IT and rampant media. Rupert Murdoch may well agree. In general, I find this all to the good, with caveats.
One caveat is the risk that we all feed the lawyers even more than today. Regulation needs to be simple and transparent wherever possible. Another is that regulation becomes a weapon in trade wars between countries. Like so much else, this is a hidden benefit of the EU: Europe regulates as one nowadays.
But generally, just like individual taxes and tickets, if people cheat and are punished, the consumer benefits and money flows to the law-abiding. If you complain about tickets, try the alternative of following the rules. Most of them are there for good reasons. If taxes and tickets and fines reflect your ability to pay, celebrate that you have that ability in the first place.
But I am sure the New Yorkers would still find something else to moan about.
I am amazed how often tax comes up in everyday conversation over here. In Europe, we don’t like tax, but generally we let it happen. I have a general saying that people who complain about tax, specifically income or wealth tax, have too much money. The more you have, the more you pay. So suck it up.
Here, it is different. There are many possible reasons why. Perhaps wealth here is something you brag about, and tax conversation is a good way to flaunt your wealth. Somehow, many taxes seem more in your face here. Sales tax is added on at the point of sale. To me, this is crazy. An item will be labelled at a cost of ten dollars, but at the checkout it rings at ten dollars eighty something. So it is much harder to budget your overall spending, and, if you pay in cash, you end up with pockets full of change (and loads of paper single dollars as well. Why?)
For me, this flaunts a basic principal of consumer rights. A price on an item should be its price. But Americans seem ready to accept it, and some even express a wish to know what the tax is. Some say that because tax varies between states, the retailer has to do it at the point of sale, but that strikes me as BS. Tax varying by state is another way tax assumes a higher profile and higher everyday concern.
The retailers lobby may be one reason this regime remains acceptable. But I also suspect the politics. It suits the right that tax is always top of the agenda. In some ways that is good, as in Europe it can be the opposite – there everyone wants everything from the state, and don’t think of the trade-off involved. Here it is the opposite. No one accepts tax, and they don’t link that to poor schools or infrastructure or elderly care. On neither continent is there much intelligent debate. And it also makes point-scoring very easy, suiting the side with the big advertising budget.
Last weekend in Atlanta there were referenda where the proposition was a sales tax for a limited time to be spent exclusively on improving the transport infrastructure. They all got voted down. It becomes very hard here to complete any project for the common good. No wonder the roads are all full of holes, and the bridges and tunnels feel unsafe. At least in New York City, there is a well-functioning system overall.
Anyway, as well as taxes, New Yorkers love to moan about tickets. So far, I haven’t got any, not least because I am not driving here yet. But the belief is that the police treat tickets as fair game to raise money, and give them out very loosely. And fail to pay, and you yet loaded with interest, and pretty soon a ban.
I may change my mind when I suffer a glut of tickets, but overall I am in favour of the approach. There are so many police on the streets here all the time, raising money is one way to make use of them. And rules are there for a reason, so we should not complain if we get fined for violating them.
How many times have I been delayed for an hour or so in London because some rich guy chose to park illegally and created a bottleneck? Fine him, say I, and at least we all get some compensation for our inconvenience. If the result is more fines, then presumably we can have good enough service, without higher taxes.
The London example raises the issue of differential fines. The reason the rich guy parks illegally is that the fine is peanuts to him. To get around that, the authorities in London started towing cars away, reasoning that this would hurt the rich guy more, since time matters more to him than money. Good move, except that the very rich guy then pays some contractor to retrieve his vehicle for him.
In Finland, I understand fines are proportional to the ability to pay. I remember this being introduced in Britain years ago, and then withdrawn again almost immediately. The elite managed to find a few old ladies who was fined thousands of pounds for a minor offence, and used them to turn public opinion.
Indeed it would be difficult to implement this system in practice, and well done to the Finns for persevering – no doubt the wonderful public IT systems there help. Without that, the debate about what income counts or wealth counts, foreign income, who owns the car and so on could make things very complicated. Unlike for the Tobin tax, this is a fair argument against a variable scheme. But hardly insurmountable, I would think. The Dutch have become smart at making fines variable depending on previous offences. Variable for some income/wealth coefficient should not be too hard to devise. That might deter the guy on Putney High Street – as long as he wasn’t a diplomat, which seems to be another insurmountable problem – hard for me to understand as insurmountable, and then I suspect some other elite conspiracy.
Joe Public is not the only one worrying about fines just now. The summer has seen many corporate fines, with more to follow. Barclays, HSBC, Google, Airlines, Glaxo and the rest are starting to pay dearly for their indiscretions. First, I often wonder where such fines go. They can be eye-watering amounts, and could help plug some debt holes just now.
Again, in principle I support these fines. In the Economist, Schumpeter argued recently that businesses will do whatever they can get away with, trading off risk against benefit. I am not quite so cynical, but I still favour harsh sanctions. If the regime is fair and consistent, it only creates a level playing field and protects the consumer.
Competition law fines started to become an issue at Shell a few years ago. A Dutch EU commissioner put a strong regime in place, including fines according to ability to pay and previous record. They also included the wonderful incentive of penalties imposed on individual managers not just their corporations. Ouch. Shell was heading into the hundreds of millions, and it had an impact. We all had lots of training, and legal scrutiny became stronger. Training beforehand had seemed half hearted, but not after the fines got nasty. Well done Nellie Kroes.
Businesses also have to worry about a secondary quasi-fine that arises from lawsuits, and a tertiary one in the form of reputation loss. Barclays and the other LIBOR miscreants seem very vulnerable to these now. I often thought Shell under-estimated this type of risk, perhaps as a European rather than a US company. I once did a study assessing the risks to a business of Shell offering services to other manufacturers, and I concluded that litigation and reputation was the biggest risk category. We could earn a few thousand dollars for some advice, but what if, either because the advice was flawed or the customer mis-applied it, the result was some catastrophe? For our own operations, we had to accept these risks, but why extend them outside the company boundary, for only a small reward? Like most of my advice, this was duly ignored – probably quite correctly.
I foresee an era when fines, litigation and reputation become even more important drivers to business success, as regulators and lawyers step up their game, supported by IT and rampant media. Rupert Murdoch may well agree. In general, I find this all to the good, with caveats.
One caveat is the risk that we all feed the lawyers even more than today. Regulation needs to be simple and transparent wherever possible. Another is that regulation becomes a weapon in trade wars between countries. Like so much else, this is a hidden benefit of the EU: Europe regulates as one nowadays.
But generally, just like individual taxes and tickets, if people cheat and are punished, the consumer benefits and money flows to the law-abiding. If you complain about tickets, try the alternative of following the rules. Most of them are there for good reasons. If taxes and tickets and fines reflect your ability to pay, celebrate that you have that ability in the first place.
But I am sure the New Yorkers would still find something else to moan about.
Monday, July 30, 2012
IKEA - My fallen Icon
This week I visited an IKEA store in the USA. Well, I visited a blue and yellow warehouse type place with the name IKEA on the front and furniture with odd Scandinavian names inside, but there the resemblance to the IKEA I love ended.
The visit was to a store in New Jersey, right by Newark Airport, at a place called Elizabeth. This area constituted a new benchmark for me for the term industrial wasteland. It seems the whole of this part of the state consists only of motorways, railroads, swamps and factories.
I was already a bit stressed, the visit coming half way through a day of picking up bits of furniture in a van from most of the New York City boroughs as well as New Jersey. But I wasn’t ready for what happened inside my blessed IKEA.
The physical layout was familiar, though the car park was vast, uncovered and bleak, and the inside seemed tired, even the restaurant. But the real problem was the service.
First, the store did not have a single catalogue inside. That is a bit like a pub with no beer, as the catalogue is at the heart of the business model. The staff were blasé about it. Seemingly, a new one was just coming out next week. But really, how can it be acceptable ever to run out of catalogues?
Then, the place seemed understaffed, and the staff that were there just didn’t have motivation or knowledge. Only three checkout lines were open, with long queues, though the people manning them seemed happy talking among themselves some of the time. After establishing upstairs that the storage units I wanted did not get supported upstairs (why?), I found the warehouse, and some computer screens which got me tantalisingly close to the information I needed to go and fetch my components. But only close. Some pictures didn’t come up well on screen, and the menus were not good enough. I just needed a catalogue! Or even the IKEA website would have sufficed. But neither were available.
Instead I asked for help. The first guy was offhand and pointed me to another guy behind a desk. Who was rude, ignorant and useless. In the end I had to guess what I needed I still don’t know if I guessed well or not.
The other thing that struck me was the absence of joy in the whole place. The staff were just going through the motions, and no managers were in sight. The customers were grim faced. Many were confused and unhappy, and more than one was handing out abuse to anyone who would listen, shouting “this place stinks” or things like that.
All in all, after a long hour and a half, I was very happy to get back to the van and drive off into the industrial wasteland, fortified only by the good meat balls, but otherwise in a foul mood. And I suspect many other customers left the same way, and some of those would not return.
When I got home, I tried to work out what had happened and why. Many European retailers struggle in the USA, and IKEA has had a mixed experience here. Does my experience this week offer any clues as to why?
When I thought about it, many of the direct aspects of the experience were similar to Europe. IKEA is nearly always in something close to an industrial wasteland, and parking is never fun there. Choosing items from the warehouse is always a fraught experience, and often leads to mistakes and follow up visits. There are frequent queues at check outs. Staff often seem to be absent from where you need them and not to quite the knowledge needed.
So the European experience is not a bundle of laughs either. Yet somehow there is something about it which makes me feel good. Something plainly missing from the experience in the USA.
I thought back to my first visits to IKEA in Europe. These had been tough too. It took time to build belief in the business model and faith in myself to make it work for me. I remember long queues in Croydon as well, and the misery of having to take loads of stuff back due to my errors. Yet I came back, and became a fan.
I think there were two reasons. One is the end product. I managed to persevere long enough with IKEA to get benefits, and to believe that I would continue to get benefits. The products are great, and wonderful value, and brilliantly designed, and even I can put them up. If I keep my head down through the difficult parts of the experience, I would emerge at the far end with a good outcome. I came to believe it was worth it.
The second reason is that IKEA did everything they could to make the experience bearable, with positive aspects mitigating the inherent bad bits. The catalogue is clear. If my mood is light enough, I can marvel at all the great products. The restaurant is a miracle. I can take myself out of the experience itself and intellectualise how superb the business model is. The staff do their very best to help. And somehow a combination of all this means that lots of other people, with their kids, are in a light, positive mood around me in the store, which keeps my own mood lifted.
So in Europe the two factors build a strong brand. The positive parts of the experience are just enough to get you through the inevitable negatives, until the great outcome kicks in, from when your mood on visiting is so good you stop noticing the negatives.
Obviously what was missing in Elizabeth was the positive aspect of the experience. Far from happy kids and great staff, this place was just miserable, and we were all dragged into the void, even long-time fans like me. And this came down to basic operations. Not enough staff. Management not caring enough (or bothering to find out) about a lack of catalogues. Undertrained, under-motivated staff.
The USA is strange when it comes to staff. I receive some wonderful service every day, from people who lift my mood. I used to think the famous “Have a nice day” cliché was a false thing forced on people by training and coercive management, but I learn that usually it isn’t. When this wow factor exists it is powerful. But I also frequently experience the opposite. Just now, having arrived, I meet a lot of government departments, and they are notorious, not just in the USA. The Department of Motor Vehicles has scarred me already, and just from one visit.
I suspect the main problem European retailers have is in creating this wow factor among the local managers and staff. This certainly seems to be the case with IKEA. Which suggests that US staff respond to a different combination of stimuli. The package of pay, teamwork, training, job security, incentive and other things needs to be different here.
I’ll observe more and develop some theories. One possibility here is that the freshness fades more quickly, so managers have to find new ways to keep people motivated more often. That would correlate with the focus on marketing and continuous renewal here.
Whatever the secret, IKEA in Elizabeth do not have it, or if they once had it, they lost it. IKEA global managers should be ashamed of that store, at least based on that one visit. I will be going to the one in Brooklyn this week, with some trepidation. Can my icon recover?
The visit was to a store in New Jersey, right by Newark Airport, at a place called Elizabeth. This area constituted a new benchmark for me for the term industrial wasteland. It seems the whole of this part of the state consists only of motorways, railroads, swamps and factories.
I was already a bit stressed, the visit coming half way through a day of picking up bits of furniture in a van from most of the New York City boroughs as well as New Jersey. But I wasn’t ready for what happened inside my blessed IKEA.
The physical layout was familiar, though the car park was vast, uncovered and bleak, and the inside seemed tired, even the restaurant. But the real problem was the service.
First, the store did not have a single catalogue inside. That is a bit like a pub with no beer, as the catalogue is at the heart of the business model. The staff were blasé about it. Seemingly, a new one was just coming out next week. But really, how can it be acceptable ever to run out of catalogues?
Then, the place seemed understaffed, and the staff that were there just didn’t have motivation or knowledge. Only three checkout lines were open, with long queues, though the people manning them seemed happy talking among themselves some of the time. After establishing upstairs that the storage units I wanted did not get supported upstairs (why?), I found the warehouse, and some computer screens which got me tantalisingly close to the information I needed to go and fetch my components. But only close. Some pictures didn’t come up well on screen, and the menus were not good enough. I just needed a catalogue! Or even the IKEA website would have sufficed. But neither were available.
Instead I asked for help. The first guy was offhand and pointed me to another guy behind a desk. Who was rude, ignorant and useless. In the end I had to guess what I needed I still don’t know if I guessed well or not.
The other thing that struck me was the absence of joy in the whole place. The staff were just going through the motions, and no managers were in sight. The customers were grim faced. Many were confused and unhappy, and more than one was handing out abuse to anyone who would listen, shouting “this place stinks” or things like that.
All in all, after a long hour and a half, I was very happy to get back to the van and drive off into the industrial wasteland, fortified only by the good meat balls, but otherwise in a foul mood. And I suspect many other customers left the same way, and some of those would not return.
When I got home, I tried to work out what had happened and why. Many European retailers struggle in the USA, and IKEA has had a mixed experience here. Does my experience this week offer any clues as to why?
When I thought about it, many of the direct aspects of the experience were similar to Europe. IKEA is nearly always in something close to an industrial wasteland, and parking is never fun there. Choosing items from the warehouse is always a fraught experience, and often leads to mistakes and follow up visits. There are frequent queues at check outs. Staff often seem to be absent from where you need them and not to quite the knowledge needed.
So the European experience is not a bundle of laughs either. Yet somehow there is something about it which makes me feel good. Something plainly missing from the experience in the USA.
I thought back to my first visits to IKEA in Europe. These had been tough too. It took time to build belief in the business model and faith in myself to make it work for me. I remember long queues in Croydon as well, and the misery of having to take loads of stuff back due to my errors. Yet I came back, and became a fan.
I think there were two reasons. One is the end product. I managed to persevere long enough with IKEA to get benefits, and to believe that I would continue to get benefits. The products are great, and wonderful value, and brilliantly designed, and even I can put them up. If I keep my head down through the difficult parts of the experience, I would emerge at the far end with a good outcome. I came to believe it was worth it.
The second reason is that IKEA did everything they could to make the experience bearable, with positive aspects mitigating the inherent bad bits. The catalogue is clear. If my mood is light enough, I can marvel at all the great products. The restaurant is a miracle. I can take myself out of the experience itself and intellectualise how superb the business model is. The staff do their very best to help. And somehow a combination of all this means that lots of other people, with their kids, are in a light, positive mood around me in the store, which keeps my own mood lifted.
So in Europe the two factors build a strong brand. The positive parts of the experience are just enough to get you through the inevitable negatives, until the great outcome kicks in, from when your mood on visiting is so good you stop noticing the negatives.
Obviously what was missing in Elizabeth was the positive aspect of the experience. Far from happy kids and great staff, this place was just miserable, and we were all dragged into the void, even long-time fans like me. And this came down to basic operations. Not enough staff. Management not caring enough (or bothering to find out) about a lack of catalogues. Undertrained, under-motivated staff.
The USA is strange when it comes to staff. I receive some wonderful service every day, from people who lift my mood. I used to think the famous “Have a nice day” cliché was a false thing forced on people by training and coercive management, but I learn that usually it isn’t. When this wow factor exists it is powerful. But I also frequently experience the opposite. Just now, having arrived, I meet a lot of government departments, and they are notorious, not just in the USA. The Department of Motor Vehicles has scarred me already, and just from one visit.
I suspect the main problem European retailers have is in creating this wow factor among the local managers and staff. This certainly seems to be the case with IKEA. Which suggests that US staff respond to a different combination of stimuli. The package of pay, teamwork, training, job security, incentive and other things needs to be different here.
I’ll observe more and develop some theories. One possibility here is that the freshness fades more quickly, so managers have to find new ways to keep people motivated more often. That would correlate with the focus on marketing and continuous renewal here.
Whatever the secret, IKEA in Elizabeth do not have it, or if they once had it, they lost it. IKEA global managers should be ashamed of that store, at least based on that one visit. I will be going to the one in Brooklyn this week, with some trepidation. Can my icon recover?
Thursday, July 19, 2012
An aural Assault
Life in New York City is certainly fast-paced. It is no wonder that I frequently look into eyes that seem very, very tired, and also into eyes that appear utterly defeated. This is no place for anyone lacking spirit.
I have come to realise that one symptom of the intensity of life here is that all my senses seem to under fire all of the time. It is nice in a way, life is spicy that way.
Touch is more frequent than elsewhere. Despite the frequent warnings in the subway about sexual assault, it is impossible to live here without touching more human beings than in other places. The subway is just crowded. So are the buses, and so are the pavements (should I say sidewalks?). Anyone over sensitive to being touched will have a miserable time here.
Taste is assaulted mainly in a good way. Food and drink are a big part of life, with little and often being the metier. I have never seen so many cafes and restaurants and street stalls, and the variety of their wares is stunning. Whereas we have been rather shocked by the cost of many things here, casual eating and drinking is quite cheap. And the variety is wonderful, so the taste buds get used to many flavours. You have to be careful to avoid things with added sugar, as much of the diet seems unhealthy. It is no wonder so many Americans have become obese, even here with its built in exercise regime.
This is a city of many smells. Human flesh is a large part of it. In the heat and the crowds, it would be good to be able to shower many times a day, but of course that is not what people can do. So odour is a part of the human diversity here. Add in smells of food, and of various forms of pollution, and there is plenty to smell.
There is always something to see, anywhere in the world that is not dark or confined. But what sights there are in New York! Nothing is petite. I was looking at some building today, very majestic architecture, somewhere in Gramercy. I have no idea what is was, but it struck me that the building would have been the centrepiece of almost any town, but here it was almost mundane. We can be snobbish about our history in Europe, but there is majesty a plenty here. Add in the human diversity, which surprises me every single day in some way, and even our eyes get life full on.
All the senses get battered, but it is the ears which bear the brunt. I remember an Indian once telling me that it was the silence in Europe that he never got used to, since there was no such thing as silence in an Indian city. It is the same here. So far, the only thing I miss of Europe is the absence of noise. I expect that would be common, it is the absence of something that we don’t appreciate so long as we have it, but miss when we lose it.
Noise here is everywhere. Start with the background noises. Air conditioning machines or power generators are never far away, with their tell-tale hum. To sleep at night in summer either requires great tolerance for heat or tolerance for noise. Open windows let in the world. Air conditioners are just noisy. When we watch television with the aircon off, we set the volume to about 16. When the machine is on, we need to set it at 40 to hear properly. Imagine what that is doing to our ears.
At home we can keep the windows closed, but what about when we are outside? There is always a steady hum of traffic, often punctuated by loud heavy motors and sirens. The subway trains are brilliant, but wow do they make a racket.
New Yorkers almost all respond to this by employing ipods, and I have come to do the same. But I wonder if that is so smart. Firstly, I cannot listen to anything with loud and soft bits, as either I am deafened in the forte or the piano is absent. Hooray for Bach and renaissance music! But even when listening to something of a steady volume, I find I need the volume set very high. These ears seem destined to be assaulted one way or another.
We luckily found a haven of peace last Sunday at the episcopal cathedral, with a lovely recital by a Cambridge college choir of all things. But even then the silence was less than I was used to. Once the conductor had to give a tone in competition with a mysterious noise emanating from somewhere. And there was also the audience. To be fair, people were quiet during the singing, but not immediately before. Two New York ladies behind us had plenty to discuss, and did not seem to mind who heard it.
Which brings me to the last source of noise, the people. Wow, are they loud, and in your face. Actually, I rather like it. A bus journey is never dull, there is always someone telling their life story or moaning about a New York sports team. In restaurants, everyone talks all the time. In Europe, I had already got used to choosing places which muffled sound better, and sitting with my good ear facing my companions. Here, even those precautions will often not be enough.
As someone whose hearing is already a little impaired, I worry what effect New York will have. I would like to see some studies on the subject. I have blogged about hearing before, and I feel this is still an under-researched area, compered for example with the science of vision. There are occasionally (rather contradictory) studies about what electronic mobile phones might be doing to our brains, but I also wonder if we are destined to be a generation of half-deaf people, especially those of us living in the biggest cities. I only hope the science of hearing aids develops quickly, for I am sure to need them before too long.
Is any relief at hand for our suffering ears? Well, I hope so. First, it will not stay mid-summer for ever, and the air-conditioning can be turned off for much of the year (though I am told that the steam heating common here makes a racket too). And we have rented a house with central air conditioning and heating, so hopefully that impediment to sleep can be removed.
Secondly, we will be living in Forest Hills, which is not anything like Manhattan, or Roosevelt Island where we are temporarily. The background noise will be less there, especially since we seem to be a good distance from railways and motorways. I am already wondering if people will speak more softly as a result.
Finally, I think we have to look to ourselves. All lives need balance. I have written about simplicity, and here we will need to seek simplicity of sound. We can seek out places of silence, and reflect more on silence when we find it. We can coach each other to speak more softly and to listen more carefully. Meditation may play a role. I wonder if the Church here might turn out to have subtly different benefits here compared with in Europe.
New York has many wonderful things to offer, and most of the surprises so far have been positive ones. But I sense that we will need to utilise our ingenuity to negate the assault on our ears that New York might be.
I have come to realise that one symptom of the intensity of life here is that all my senses seem to under fire all of the time. It is nice in a way, life is spicy that way.
Touch is more frequent than elsewhere. Despite the frequent warnings in the subway about sexual assault, it is impossible to live here without touching more human beings than in other places. The subway is just crowded. So are the buses, and so are the pavements (should I say sidewalks?). Anyone over sensitive to being touched will have a miserable time here.
Taste is assaulted mainly in a good way. Food and drink are a big part of life, with little and often being the metier. I have never seen so many cafes and restaurants and street stalls, and the variety of their wares is stunning. Whereas we have been rather shocked by the cost of many things here, casual eating and drinking is quite cheap. And the variety is wonderful, so the taste buds get used to many flavours. You have to be careful to avoid things with added sugar, as much of the diet seems unhealthy. It is no wonder so many Americans have become obese, even here with its built in exercise regime.
This is a city of many smells. Human flesh is a large part of it. In the heat and the crowds, it would be good to be able to shower many times a day, but of course that is not what people can do. So odour is a part of the human diversity here. Add in smells of food, and of various forms of pollution, and there is plenty to smell.
There is always something to see, anywhere in the world that is not dark or confined. But what sights there are in New York! Nothing is petite. I was looking at some building today, very majestic architecture, somewhere in Gramercy. I have no idea what is was, but it struck me that the building would have been the centrepiece of almost any town, but here it was almost mundane. We can be snobbish about our history in Europe, but there is majesty a plenty here. Add in the human diversity, which surprises me every single day in some way, and even our eyes get life full on.
All the senses get battered, but it is the ears which bear the brunt. I remember an Indian once telling me that it was the silence in Europe that he never got used to, since there was no such thing as silence in an Indian city. It is the same here. So far, the only thing I miss of Europe is the absence of noise. I expect that would be common, it is the absence of something that we don’t appreciate so long as we have it, but miss when we lose it.
Noise here is everywhere. Start with the background noises. Air conditioning machines or power generators are never far away, with their tell-tale hum. To sleep at night in summer either requires great tolerance for heat or tolerance for noise. Open windows let in the world. Air conditioners are just noisy. When we watch television with the aircon off, we set the volume to about 16. When the machine is on, we need to set it at 40 to hear properly. Imagine what that is doing to our ears.
At home we can keep the windows closed, but what about when we are outside? There is always a steady hum of traffic, often punctuated by loud heavy motors and sirens. The subway trains are brilliant, but wow do they make a racket.
New Yorkers almost all respond to this by employing ipods, and I have come to do the same. But I wonder if that is so smart. Firstly, I cannot listen to anything with loud and soft bits, as either I am deafened in the forte or the piano is absent. Hooray for Bach and renaissance music! But even when listening to something of a steady volume, I find I need the volume set very high. These ears seem destined to be assaulted one way or another.
We luckily found a haven of peace last Sunday at the episcopal cathedral, with a lovely recital by a Cambridge college choir of all things. But even then the silence was less than I was used to. Once the conductor had to give a tone in competition with a mysterious noise emanating from somewhere. And there was also the audience. To be fair, people were quiet during the singing, but not immediately before. Two New York ladies behind us had plenty to discuss, and did not seem to mind who heard it.
Which brings me to the last source of noise, the people. Wow, are they loud, and in your face. Actually, I rather like it. A bus journey is never dull, there is always someone telling their life story or moaning about a New York sports team. In restaurants, everyone talks all the time. In Europe, I had already got used to choosing places which muffled sound better, and sitting with my good ear facing my companions. Here, even those precautions will often not be enough.
As someone whose hearing is already a little impaired, I worry what effect New York will have. I would like to see some studies on the subject. I have blogged about hearing before, and I feel this is still an under-researched area, compered for example with the science of vision. There are occasionally (rather contradictory) studies about what electronic mobile phones might be doing to our brains, but I also wonder if we are destined to be a generation of half-deaf people, especially those of us living in the biggest cities. I only hope the science of hearing aids develops quickly, for I am sure to need them before too long.
Is any relief at hand for our suffering ears? Well, I hope so. First, it will not stay mid-summer for ever, and the air-conditioning can be turned off for much of the year (though I am told that the steam heating common here makes a racket too). And we have rented a house with central air conditioning and heating, so hopefully that impediment to sleep can be removed.
Secondly, we will be living in Forest Hills, which is not anything like Manhattan, or Roosevelt Island where we are temporarily. The background noise will be less there, especially since we seem to be a good distance from railways and motorways. I am already wondering if people will speak more softly as a result.
Finally, I think we have to look to ourselves. All lives need balance. I have written about simplicity, and here we will need to seek simplicity of sound. We can seek out places of silence, and reflect more on silence when we find it. We can coach each other to speak more softly and to listen more carefully. Meditation may play a role. I wonder if the Church here might turn out to have subtly different benefits here compared with in Europe.
New York has many wonderful things to offer, and most of the surprises so far have been positive ones. But I sense that we will need to utilise our ingenuity to negate the assault on our ears that New York might be.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
First Bites of the Big Apple
Today seems the first time in a month that I have been able to draw breath. Some periods of our lives go at turbo speed, with decisions and actions far faster than normal. We get by somehow on adrenaline, supported if possible by good friends and some project management skills. This has been such a period for me, combining my wedding last month with a relocation to New York City on 1st July.
When I look back at what we have managed to achieve this month I am rather proud. Somehow we have enjoyed a milestone celebration in a great way, while emptying a flat, finding new places, and all the million and one other things required to relocate. So far nothing serious has gone wrong, at least nothing with any longer-term consequence. We hope to sign a lease for a permanent apartment here this evening, not bad for nine days after flying in. There is still much to do, but hopefully from now on we can gradually revert to our normal pace of life.
So what of New York? Two clues are in the paragraph above.
First, somehow the place works. I managed to get a working mobile phone on the first day, and a bank account on the second day, with funds transferred into it by day four. I know from bitter experience that would have been much harder in the UK, and in other European countries as well. For all that we Europeans tend to look with scorn at the market-created chaos in the USA, my experience so far is that things work. You can find what you need, unnecessary obstacles are removed, and people are anxious to help. That is a pleasant surprise. At least I expected some problems because of our international backgrounds – after all the UK seems incapable of understanding that some people come from other countries, so I would have expected the same in an even more insular land with even more power and arrogance. But not so – well done USA.
Heck, even the public transport works. Transport is one of my favourite topics to extol central planning and its benefits. The Dutch are brilliant, the British rubbish, and it really shows. Until now, my assumption had been that only governmental oversight (national or local) could deliver this well. New York proves me wrong. Think of one place in the world where you would expect gridlock, and you might choose Manhattan. It is an island, reliant on bridges, in a land worshipping the car. Now, admittedly it is a holiday season, but somehow the various forces at work seem to have happily conspired to prevent this.
The subway may not be beautiful, but it is mighty extensive and effective. I did not expect to see so many buses, or even local trains. People even walk. And Manhattan has smartly used its reliance on bridges and tunnels as an effective defence mechanism by imposing large tolls. On Saturday, we went to New Jersey. On the way, we used public transport, and paid a flat fare $2,25 for a subway ticket and $4,50 for a bus, altogether travelling quite a distance. London, are you watching? On the way home, we took a lift in a car. The journey took longer, and was punctuated by $20 in tolls, not counting fuel or other costs. To my mind, that is how it should be – and not how I expected it to be in the land of the free and the powerful.
The system is also helped by a plethora of helpful announcements and signs. Some of this might emanate from the litigious nature of US society (“please tread carefully onto escalators”), but much of it simply helps. Each subway train and station has great maps and signs, and they announce things clearly. It also helps a mathematician like me that they use smart systems. The numbered avenue and street grid in Manhattan is well-known, and wow does it help navigation. They have the same in other boroughs, and signs use compass directions very usefully too. House numbers follow the pattern so you can find an address approximately quickly. In Forest Hills, some of the streets have real names, but consecutive streets start with A, B, C and so on. Smart. This is a mathematical navigator’s paradise!
The other clue about first impressions is about the pace of life here in New York City. It is not slow. People walk more quickly and converse more purposefully. Of course I have been ringing and visiting many estate agents this week. I would characterise these encounters by the expression “cut the crap”. No small talk, just down to business. If they haven’t got what I want, they work it out quickly, tell me, and kick me out the door, with a friendly “have a nice day” delivered to my back.
I have to say I like it. No one is unfriendly, but they don’t waste each other’s time either. It is not all about money, but money plays its part. Time is money. Space is money too. I just love the way they use the vertical axis of space here. Car parks use every square inch, and then do more by using cubic inches too, stacking the cars on winches high into the sky. Brilliant. But will life at this speed become tiring? I’ll let you know in the months ahead.
One bonus I have now is that for the first time in sixteen years I’m living in a country where I speak the native language. I’ve got by before, somehow understanding the gist of what is coming on around me, using all my senses and asking for help. But here they speak English! What heaven! I only realise what a handicap it has been for all these years now the handicap has finally been removed. Lucky me.
Mind you, you do hear some strange versions of English. I thought I was living in a diverse society in The Hague, but I was kidding myself, compared with here. True, we had many nationalities in The Hague, and Dutch society is tolerant of lifestyle choices. But here I have had to add extra dimensions. Take affluence. In The Hague we had poorer and richer people living together, but somehow within limits and with some borders. Here the range is wider and the borders less clear. Poor and desperate people, some missing limbs, are living side by side to the most affluent. I have seen some of the shortest and some of the tallest people I’ve ever come across in the last week. Colours blend, and you sense that within a generation or two they will have blended even more. I am amazed at how many Asians are here, and from so many countries. This is all great, in my opinion.
You also see some very tired people, with “lived in” faces. Living at this pace for so long and with some of life’s disadvantages must be tough here, yet many do it, year after year. You see some desperate life stories in the faces on the subway, every day. Many faces betray some cynicism and suspicion as well. This is a tough place to live, if you are not affluent, young or loved. I don’t think this is somewhere we would consider growing old.
I am looking forward to experiencing what New York City has to offer. I feel truly blessed. Each morning I open the blinds to see the might of Manhattan stretching before me across the East river. What a testament to humanity this place is.
When I look back at what we have managed to achieve this month I am rather proud. Somehow we have enjoyed a milestone celebration in a great way, while emptying a flat, finding new places, and all the million and one other things required to relocate. So far nothing serious has gone wrong, at least nothing with any longer-term consequence. We hope to sign a lease for a permanent apartment here this evening, not bad for nine days after flying in. There is still much to do, but hopefully from now on we can gradually revert to our normal pace of life.
So what of New York? Two clues are in the paragraph above.
First, somehow the place works. I managed to get a working mobile phone on the first day, and a bank account on the second day, with funds transferred into it by day four. I know from bitter experience that would have been much harder in the UK, and in other European countries as well. For all that we Europeans tend to look with scorn at the market-created chaos in the USA, my experience so far is that things work. You can find what you need, unnecessary obstacles are removed, and people are anxious to help. That is a pleasant surprise. At least I expected some problems because of our international backgrounds – after all the UK seems incapable of understanding that some people come from other countries, so I would have expected the same in an even more insular land with even more power and arrogance. But not so – well done USA.
Heck, even the public transport works. Transport is one of my favourite topics to extol central planning and its benefits. The Dutch are brilliant, the British rubbish, and it really shows. Until now, my assumption had been that only governmental oversight (national or local) could deliver this well. New York proves me wrong. Think of one place in the world where you would expect gridlock, and you might choose Manhattan. It is an island, reliant on bridges, in a land worshipping the car. Now, admittedly it is a holiday season, but somehow the various forces at work seem to have happily conspired to prevent this.
The subway may not be beautiful, but it is mighty extensive and effective. I did not expect to see so many buses, or even local trains. People even walk. And Manhattan has smartly used its reliance on bridges and tunnels as an effective defence mechanism by imposing large tolls. On Saturday, we went to New Jersey. On the way, we used public transport, and paid a flat fare $2,25 for a subway ticket and $4,50 for a bus, altogether travelling quite a distance. London, are you watching? On the way home, we took a lift in a car. The journey took longer, and was punctuated by $20 in tolls, not counting fuel or other costs. To my mind, that is how it should be – and not how I expected it to be in the land of the free and the powerful.
The system is also helped by a plethora of helpful announcements and signs. Some of this might emanate from the litigious nature of US society (“please tread carefully onto escalators”), but much of it simply helps. Each subway train and station has great maps and signs, and they announce things clearly. It also helps a mathematician like me that they use smart systems. The numbered avenue and street grid in Manhattan is well-known, and wow does it help navigation. They have the same in other boroughs, and signs use compass directions very usefully too. House numbers follow the pattern so you can find an address approximately quickly. In Forest Hills, some of the streets have real names, but consecutive streets start with A, B, C and so on. Smart. This is a mathematical navigator’s paradise!
The other clue about first impressions is about the pace of life here in New York City. It is not slow. People walk more quickly and converse more purposefully. Of course I have been ringing and visiting many estate agents this week. I would characterise these encounters by the expression “cut the crap”. No small talk, just down to business. If they haven’t got what I want, they work it out quickly, tell me, and kick me out the door, with a friendly “have a nice day” delivered to my back.
I have to say I like it. No one is unfriendly, but they don’t waste each other’s time either. It is not all about money, but money plays its part. Time is money. Space is money too. I just love the way they use the vertical axis of space here. Car parks use every square inch, and then do more by using cubic inches too, stacking the cars on winches high into the sky. Brilliant. But will life at this speed become tiring? I’ll let you know in the months ahead.
One bonus I have now is that for the first time in sixteen years I’m living in a country where I speak the native language. I’ve got by before, somehow understanding the gist of what is coming on around me, using all my senses and asking for help. But here they speak English! What heaven! I only realise what a handicap it has been for all these years now the handicap has finally been removed. Lucky me.
Mind you, you do hear some strange versions of English. I thought I was living in a diverse society in The Hague, but I was kidding myself, compared with here. True, we had many nationalities in The Hague, and Dutch society is tolerant of lifestyle choices. But here I have had to add extra dimensions. Take affluence. In The Hague we had poorer and richer people living together, but somehow within limits and with some borders. Here the range is wider and the borders less clear. Poor and desperate people, some missing limbs, are living side by side to the most affluent. I have seen some of the shortest and some of the tallest people I’ve ever come across in the last week. Colours blend, and you sense that within a generation or two they will have blended even more. I am amazed at how many Asians are here, and from so many countries. This is all great, in my opinion.
You also see some very tired people, with “lived in” faces. Living at this pace for so long and with some of life’s disadvantages must be tough here, yet many do it, year after year. You see some desperate life stories in the faces on the subway, every day. Many faces betray some cynicism and suspicion as well. This is a tough place to live, if you are not affluent, young or loved. I don’t think this is somewhere we would consider growing old.
I am looking forward to experiencing what New York City has to offer. I feel truly blessed. Each morning I open the blinds to see the might of Manhattan stretching before me across the East river. What a testament to humanity this place is.
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