Vorsprung durch Schadenfreude

If a language runs out of the words to describe things properly, it is not uncommon to borrow expressions from abroad.

This way the French have given us Menage A Trois, the Italian can claim Al Fresco dining to be theirs and Germany has thrown Schadenfreude into the mix.

Ergo, one would wonder whether there is a pattern.

Then again, European countries have been at war with each other with horrible regularity over thousands of years and have invaded their neighbours and were invaded back by their neighbours since the old Roman days, a fact that contributes its fair share to the mixing of languages.

It is remarkable however, how influences seem to be particularly prominent in certain aspects of life.

Clearly anything medical is firmly in the hands of Latin but since this is a language that is dead beyond any medication, it shall therefore hardly be counted. (I don't even mention my profound Latin knowledge in my CV any more - what an irony.)

The legendary obsession of the French with matters of love have therefore brought us rendez-vous and the above-mentioned menage a trois, but also surprisingly many militaristic contributions such as sabotage and Agent Provocateur. And since apres-ski is pretty much non-existent in the French speaking part of Switzerland, it has to origin in France as well.

A few culinary add-ons such as hors d'oeuvre and amuse bouche can't be left out although the Italians with their pasta, pizza and al fresco dining certainly compete for the top spot.

But since our friends from Italy have given the world amore, they actually don't have to compete with anyone.

Which, in terms of major languages leaves us to contemplate the German influence. Schadenfreude, ie finding pleasure in somebody else's misfortune, clearly says a lot about how Germans are perceived (and we don't mean perceived as in wearing Lederhosen and eating Bratwurst and Sauerkraut). They have also given England the Blitz, which is a dubious claim to fame if there ever was one, and on a only slighter note Poltergeist, Doppelganger but finally Kindergarten.

But maybe to strike a balance with a fair few negative connotations, teutonic benevolance is heard whenever some replaces "Bless you" with "Gesundheit".

So maybe not all is kaputt yet, and it's not all about enjoying other people's misery which should provide some piece of mind next time you leap of a rather tall building in a charity "Abseiling".

Fortunately, the German word for fast, schnell, is, while occasionally used, not common enough to really have rightfully gained its place. Otherwise, our beloved Wikipedia - derived from the Hawaiian word for quick wiki, could have turned out to be Schnell-pedia.

And somehow I doubt it would have been the Uber-website it is nowadays.

The Frappuccino Brainwash

It's not just about waking up.
It's about making a lifestyle statement.
Cheers.

There is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which a Virtual Reality game is being used to make the crew members of the Enterprise instantly addicted and which is later used by evil alien forces to brainwash the crew into giving up the starship.

Passing Starbucks on the way to work I felt very much reminded of this when one of the Baristas - dressed in the obligatory green apron - was handing out small cups of Frappuccino to the City professionals rushing by. It made me wonder when the adult population of the UK decided that life is not worth living unless one has at least consumed one ridiculously overpriced coffee-resembling product in the morning? Or whether it is potentially all part of a bigger scheme of the Baristas (which could -- for all I know -- be the name of an alien species) taking over the world and brainwashing us into succumbing to their Frothiness?

Looking at it differently, there are quite a few things around that a lot of people would argue they can't do without nowadays whereas 10 years ago nodody would have had them on the list of bare necessities. IPods, Wi-Fi, Facebook, Vitamin Water etc etc.

The key, and this is where the magic called marketing comes in, is making people believe that they genuinely cannot do without. Making it part of a lifestyle that people want to adopt, part of a culture that everybody wants to be part of.

It doesn't require a genius to sell water in the Sahara, but making people want to spend £4 for an iced coffee beverage takes a bigger effort.

It seems to have worked quite well for a while.

As long as a lot of people were making money like the girl in the Starbucks logo is catching gold coins, the strategy seemed to have paid off nicely. Looking at Starbucks closing down stores, h0wever, makes you wonder whether the Venti Caramel Frappucino is now moving from the "must-have" to the "could-do without" list, in particular when the cost of regular visits add up to the order of magnitude of a monthly travelcard.

Of course, everybody has to decide for themselves what they are cutting out of their daily routine when it seems that expenses are getting a bit out of hand. Whether it's the cab ride home, the Frappuccino, the lunchtime sushi rather than the M&S takeaway etc.

Always assuming that there is no evil head Barista in the mothership flipping a switch so that we find ourselves walking brainlessly to their next outlet mumbling:

Must - Drink - Frappuccino.

The best Whatever this side of Wherever

In an attempt to come up with yet more superlatives to praise their products, vendors should not have reason, or geography get in the way of a punchy tagline.

Since I try to distribute my patronage of caffeinated drinks amongst all the coffee providers out there, my way leads me to Caffe Nero every so often. Apart from the fact that I usually forget my loyalty card and start collecting stamps from anew (leading to a rather large pile of loyalty cards that are nowhere near being redeemed for a free beverage), they also have the slogan:

The best espresso this side of Milan.

Whilst it didn't strike me as being overly silly, despite being difficult to either verify or falsify, a business lunch to Chez Gerard revealed their tagline as:

The best steak-frites this side of Paris.

Apparently, there seems to be a pattern in this. Maybe it is my failure that I have never read a textbook on advertising, which might reveal this to be a classic style feature, not dissimilar to alliterations and tautologies.

Logically however, I was wondering - where is this side of Paris? Or, assuming we are on this side of Paris (since Chez Gerard is obviously here), what's on the other side of Paris? Is it merely a matter of latitude and longitude? If so, is Berlin, although equally north of Paris but further east, this side of Paris or the other side? Which steak-frites have they compared it to then to get a comprehensive sample of steak-frites on this side of Paris?

All these things going through my head whilst waiting for the dish to be served, which, at the end did not turn out to be that spectacular after all. Then again, I never had steak-frites in Paris (neither on the other side of), so maybe they are all equally unremarkable.

But, a line that is good enough to praise espressos and steaks should have enough life in it to be used for so many other products as well. What about Whole Foods marketing their fruit as

The biggest apples this side of New York.

Or a brokerage in Canary Wharf describing their traders as

The biggest swinging d***s this side of the Square Mile.

Although maybe this ends up being too measurable after all.

Plagiarism - It's A Crime!

You wouldn't steal a handbag. Check.
You wouldn't steal a car. Check.
You wouldn't steal an idea. Or would you?

Of course, the above sentence is in fact, already stolen, because it is what you have to sit through if you have the time and leisure to sit down at home and watch a DVD.

Nobody knows why you have to endure it, because by the time you are being brainwashed you are just about to watch a movie (or TV show for that matter) that you have legally acquired anyway. The stuff that's illegally taped in a movie theatre in Bangkok usually does not come with this type of warning.

The topic du jour however, is plagiarism. Stealing ideas, using other people's material without quoting adequately. Selling somebody's thoughts as your own.

In this day and age, everybody seems to be putting his or her thoughts out to the world. Are you stealing somebody's idea if and when you are just writing about the same subject?

Clearly, the Times reporter can't call his counterpart from The Guardian and tell him not to write about the Euro 2008 Final because he had already done a piece.

However, let's say that I have written something very random about movie posters and how the quotes on those usually have nothing to do with how good (or bad) the movie really is (which I have) just to find somebody else shortly afterwards writing about the same thing. Should I be upset (knowing through Google Analytics that my piece has been read)? Should I feel plagiarised?

I would in general think that once an idea is out, it is up to everyone to pick it up, be inspired by it and do their own take on whatever they have come across. From my past in academia, this is how science works and ideas progress. Here of course, the cause pursued is considerably less worthy, but then again, we can't save the world all the time I suppose.

Maybe, the right approach (unless somebody is genuinely being copied) is to go with the Muppets who would say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

On this note, I shall feel flattered.

House Prices, Bonuses, Whatever Next?

Everything is dropping. Not a month passes by without horror stories about house prices dropping. Now comes the worst shocker: Last year's City bonuses, so reports The Guardian, were lower than the year before for the first time since total bonus payouts were recorded (how does that work by the way?) in 2003.

They were lower by the mere sum of £300m year-on-year, and they were still 174% higher than 4 years earlier, but such mundane numbers should never get in the way of a punchy headline.

Of course, these two things, and a few others are not entirely unrelated.

Amidst all the doom and gloom, people start wondering whether they really like to commit all their disposable cash to buy a bigger townhouse in Chelsea or whether it's worth the wait to get it a little bit cheaper. Maybe after the next Chelsea FC manager is sacked and moves back to his home country, or maybe after prices have declined overall.

Rightly so, a genuine concern about bonuses seems to have gripped the City. 2007 was a bad year - although note that payouts were still almost 3 times what they were 2003 - and 2008 does not promise to be much better, probably quite the opposite in fact.

And this of course, could have wider implications.

I am starting to get concerned for instance that Damien Hirst might have problems flogging his Golden Calf, or at least maybe has to give a discount on its £12m price tag due to a miserable economic outlook.

That is of course, unless potential buyers realise that it is ACTUALLY a bull (covered and suspended in all sorts of liquids and precious metals). Hence it could be considered food, and if one thing is certain about food prices currently, they are far from dropping.

Random Thought #1: Oblivious Tubing

Have you ever thought about why you know where you are when you get out of the Tube? (Or any means of transportation for that matter?)

Now, the smart ones will of course argue that every Tube stop has a number of rather large signs indicating where you are. There is some truth in there. If you get to the station in the picture for instance, you will realise that you are only steps away from overpriced raspberries at Whole Foods on High Street Kensington and you will act accordingly.

But how do you KNOW that you are REALLY at High Street Ken?

Sometimes it amuses me to think that means of transportation such as the Tube, Eurostar, airplanes - where you do not see the way you are travelling - actually entail a huge degree of trust. Of course, if you get off at Westminster and you see Big Ben, you know where you are even if you haven't walked down all of Whitehall to make 100% sure that you are in the right spot.

But if you get on an airplane to get to a city which maybe does not have many distinct features but is a rather unremarkable agglomeration of non-descript buildings, you might not be that certain. Imagine further that you have slept through parts of the travel or you haven't been able to follow the in-flight route tracker mile-by-mile, and you can see that your mind could play tricks on you easily.

Stepping off the aircraft, it sometimes feels that you could be literally anywhere, and if the airline wanted to play tricks on you, they would have just dropped you off somewhere it suited them rather than you.

When I embarked on my first intercontinental travel to the US a couple of decades ago, I landed in San Diego and was rather tired after a long trip, and of course without fresh clothes to change into. A few hours of bus travel later we ended up in the Southern Californian desert but it took me a while, a lot of checking maps and finally some credulousness to convince myself that I was really there. But then again, maybe I was just too gullible and the school trip was all part of a huge scam. I mean, we have all watched Capricorn One.

So, if you happen to go to Balham for the first time to visit friends and you step off the Tube, spare a thought and think how you really know that this cluster of streets full of terraced houses is Balham.

For all I know, it could be anywhere.

iPhone: Curse of the Early Adopter?

With Apple advertising the new iPhone 3G as "Twice as fast. Half the price", this can only mean bad news for all those who jumped on the bandwagon a little early, right? Not quite, it turns out.

Adopting technology early is a strategy that does not necessarily bear merits. Remember Beta videos and Sony minidiscs? Exactly. As a matter of fact the increasingly short lifecycles of technological equipment lead to two possible strategies when purchasing new goods.

1. You either postpone buying anything because you know that in a short while you can get a superior piece of machinery for less money or
   
2. You just grind your teeth and get on with it. Although in all likelihood, the goods you purchase will be outdated in next-to-no-time.

Following the second strategy at least has you have access to some recent technology whilst with the first one we would still all be computing (or what used to be computing) on a Commodore 64.

As a short background, I have not been a Mac user all my life, but have been converted about four years ago. It was not a decision of religious proportions but one of convenience, although in the meantime, it has gotten to the point where I could not see myself returning to PC mundanity. Ever.

So, when the iPhone hit the UK about 6 months ago, and thankfully my contract with Vodafone had just run out, I jumped on the opportunity to smarten up my phone equipment, albeit for a hefty price. Back then, it cost £269 to purchase, even though you had to commit to a 18 month contract. The upfront cost was dampered by the fact that my wife bought it for me (which led to the Vodafone representative arguing with me - when trying to lure me back - that this is pretty much like paying myself. This is when I stopped dealing with our friends from Newbury).

And while the phone is not perfect, the battery life is a bit meagre for instance, it is in fact a superior piece of engineering which from my point of view is head and shoulder above any other phone I had in the past. Having said that, I went - being patriotic - through a number of Siemens phones which tended to break easily and didn't like the few Sony phones I had afterwards. So I was ready to try a new brand anyway....

In general, as a reasonably passionate Mac user it didn't take much convincing to get me hooked on the iPhone and I have been happily using it since.

Now yesterday, Apple presented the new iPhone 3G which promises all the things that were criticised about version 1.0, 3G access, GPS etc etc. And all of that for half the price of the original one, which makes us early customers look a little silly.

I thought this would again be a case of just having to live with the fact that your car loses half its value driving it around the first corner, until I got a text from O2 tempting me into a free upgrade to the new model.

Last time I checked, O2 was not registered as a charity, so there must be economic reasoning behind this. First of all, they only upgrade those on a contract for £45 a month or more (which I am not) but the ones on the cheaper contracts can buy a new model for £99. So apparently, they must make enough out of the monthly fees to happily subsidise the handset. To tempt even more, they are introducing Pay-as-you-go so that the second (old) iPhone could still be used.

All in all, while I don't think there is concern to be had about O2's future earnings, this is a reasonably happy surprise to the early adopters.

Maybe, in an environment were technology becomes more and more disposable and exchangeable, somebody has actually realised that there is value in binding your customers to you by offering them something they appreciate, rather than leaving them feel ripped off.

This seems to have been Apple's strategy when they refunded the even earlier adopters (before they slashed the price in the US last year after a few months) and O2 has taken this on board.

Aside from tangible products, nowadays it is all about the brand and what consumers are associating with it. Not being penalised for showing brand loyalty is a nice add-on for the customer.

One man's trash

is another man's treasure. Which is what sprang to my mind when offloading my trash and bumping into poor old Genghis Khan who had been disposed of by his previous owner.

But of course, the local authorities have for some time now refused to take him on board of their garbage trucks, which could be for numerous reasons:

• He is recyclable but not wrapped in a Local-Borough-Authorised Pink Bag and will therefore not qualify as recycling or
• Despite his lean figure, he would be considered bulk refuse and therefore would need to get an appointment to be picked up individually.

One could argue that the second treatment is much more appropriate for a figure of his historic stature.

Even though it would land him exactly where the first option would lead him as well, onto the landfill of history.

Think Before You Chip and Pin

In a world where you tip by waving your Oyster Card and feed the parking meter by phone, some first hand experience on how safe "Chip-and-Pin" is, and on how to deal with the aftermath of being ripped off and seeing your money disappear to Romania.

Last year during the run-up to Christmas, I stopped at the cashpoint at Cannon Street Station to get some money since the excessive consumption of egg-nog lattes had left me short of cash. Coincidentally checking my bank account online a few hours later, I saw the record of the withdrawal, but surprisingly noticed another withdrawal of a strange amount ending in 74p. Whilst I was still trying to figure out how I would possibly have taken out such an odd sum, I could not rule out that it had been a transaction done a few days ago that had just come through.

In an effort to be diligent and vigilant I contacted my bank (or rather their overseas call centre) in order to find out details about the withdrawal. While they had no more information at hand, I was promised that they would find out more within 24 hours and would contact me once that was the case. In the meantime I cautiously blocked the card.

Within the next day, the call centre called me back but - about half a dozen security questions later - only to tell me that more information had not come through yet. In the meantime, I had realised that not only my card but all my accounts were actually blocked. Which was particularly unfortunate since my -- 2007/credit-crunch/(but nonetheless) -- bonus had just come in which I couldn't access.

A few days, many phone calls later -- with the excuse of technical problems -- I was told that the transaction was a cash withdrawal made in a town that I didn't know. However, Google helped me locate it in the province of Romania. That explained the odd sum, but not how somebody stole my money somewhere in Central Europe.

Naively I believed (in particular given that the Romania and the Cannon Street withdrawals were about one hour apart) that this was quite obviously fraud. To my surprise the (overseas, call centre) clerk revealed to me that my bank would not be able to refund the money since clearly it had been me who had given the details to somebody else.

Well, let's rest here for a second: That's my bank - who I believe am a fairly good client of - calling me a fraud.

I was furious, and after threatening to close my accounts (which since blocking them about a week earlier had actually cost me more in interest than the sum withdrawn to begin with) he reiterated his statement referring to company policy.

Swearing to myself that this was the last time I would ever deal with a help line located further east than Canterbury, I decided to face the enemy and walk into the next branch, ready to cut my ties with this institution.

I would have, if it hadn't been for the fact that the employee in the branch (1) was friendly and apologetic beyond belief and (2) confirmed immediately that they would have fraud departments dealing with this and (3) stated that fraud like this happened pretty much all the time.

Apparently, depending on where you shop, sometimes dodgy employees sell on debit card details (he even knew the price - 20 GBP), get your PIN off security camera tapes, and then -- usually in Eastern Europe -- somebody gets to your money with a fake card, because the ATMs down there cannot read the Chip yet but only the magnetic stripe which is easier to forge.

While this episode had left me furious at times, it also left me with some valuable (and probably very obvious) lessons learnt:

• Always, always cover your hand typing in the PIN. There are so many security cameras on you all the time, there's likely to be one on you when you Chip-And-Pin.
• Being the victim of theft, no matter how "clean" and remote it might occur in these digital days, leaves you with the feeling of your privacy being invaded. And even if common sense prevails at the end and you get your stolen money refunded, this is not a good feeling to be left with.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity on 20Jan2008. The original article is available here.

Paper, Plastic, What the F...abric!

Can you save the world by bringing your own bag to Waitrose? Has your paper-bagged lunch a reduced carbon footprint? Are we barking up the wrong last trees that are left?

First things first: I come from a country where we have been charged for plastic bags in supermarkets as long as I can remember which is about 3 decades. Everybody is used to it, and guess what, nobody pays. The simple reason is that people are either bringing their own bags to the store, or alternative means of getting your purchases home.

When I moved to this country I was therefore amazed that if you buy anything, even just a pack of crisps, you are always being asked whether you would like a bag with it. It turns out however, that things seem to be changing.

Marks and Spencer recently announced a 5p charge for any plastic bag with the purpose of eliminating about 280m plastic bags (! ) a year. On a side note, this led to the following conversation when recently buying a bottle of Lucozade at Tesco after the visit to the gym.

Me: I don't need a bag for this.
Tesco Employee: Come on, have one.
Me: I really don't need a bag.
T.E.: But they are free, we're not as stingy as Marks and Spencer.

The question is whether the plastic bag is really the culprit for the demise of our planet, or simply unfairly blamed. The raw facts are:

• There are about 13bn plastic bags used in the UK every year, which is more than 200 per household.
• A plastic bag can take 400 - 1000 years to break down.
• Most plastic bags do not end up in landfills, but all over place. Therefore only 0.3% of waste in landfills is in fact made up of plastic bags.
• On the upside (if there is any), claims that thousands of seabirds are killed by plastic bags each year, seem to be bogus.
• In Ireland, where charging for plastic bags was introduced, plastic bag usage decreased, but purchases of bin liners increased by 400 per cent.

Is it maybe just the fact that the bag is plastic, that is so detrimental? Are you being more responsible if you ask to get a paper bag with your lunch at Pret a Manger?

It turns out that paper and plastic bags, if only used once, are very similar in their effects on the environment, considering everything from the resources used in production to their recycling.

I can see why some supermarkets are happily continuing to hand out plastic bags, given that they function as free advertising - you are effectively showing to the world that you shopped at Tesco whilst nobody seems to be shopping at M & S (although they will probably sell branded tote bags soon).

Even if I can't claim that I save a bunch of albatrosses every year, it seems like a no-brainer to happily refuse a plastic bag for every small purchase because it is just not needed (in particular not when you are with your man bag).

And for the regular groceries, I do it the way I grew up and bring my ecologically friendly bag labelled "Applied Probability Conference 1999".

Which is the same as being labelled "I am not a plastic bag - my owner is a geek".

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 11/Mar/2008. View the original here.

A slight change of plan

I thought it would be worth re-publishing a few short pieces of mine that have appeared over the course of the last year on the life section of HereIsTheCity, a financial news website targeted at the London crowd. 

They vary in subject and quality, and the order in which they appear does not contain any commentary on which one I favour.