Dumb Cheat
Posted: September 3, 2008 Filed under: World | Tags: gem, gemstone, ruby, sapphire Leave a comment » 
Dear Fraudster,
Thank you for you last email. It was a pleasure doing business with you.
I am sorry you had to pay these $1.750 in VAT. Count it as cost of business.
See, when you paid with your wife’s credit card back in Florida, I took the liberty and called her number. Somehow she couldn’t remember she was married.
Anyways, I did as you asked and sent the gem to your “holiday” address in Singapore. Being a correct businessman, I had to declare full value, hence the hefty tax.
I understand you like the gem and want to order another one? Sure, go ahead. But before I must tell you that it is not untreated sapphire you have there. It is a heavily radiated topaz. Its value is around 10 bucks with all those ugly inclusions. But I wouldn’t take it for free.
You really thought I was going to send you a valuable stone when you paid VAT, didn’t you?
I am looking forward to you next order.
Take care
Edward Bristol
P.S. There you may see that even loving Buddhist compassion has its limits.
P.P.S. Sombody misunderstood: This is not about a husband cheating on his wife in Singapore but about credit card fraud.
Beggars
Posted: September 1, 2008 Filed under: Africa, Asia | Tags: Africa, Asia, charity, poverty, third world Leave a comment »
Many soft-shelled Westerners are shocked when first confronted with the seemingly unlimited suffering on the city streets of Asia or Africa. Men without limbs lie on streets holding plastic cups with their lips, pregnant women wail for alms, little children with sad eyes roll in the mud and blind mongoloids play heartbreakingly bad on some ancient instrument. Yes, it is terrible… but look twice before you donate.
I remember a little girl with her two puppies: She slept on the busiest piece of sidewalk in town, right next to the stench and dirt of a roaring six lane road. People might have stepped on her or the dogs at any time. If you love kids and puppies, like most humans, seeing them helpless and without shelter in the filth seems too much to bear.
But, when passing that area more often, you will realize that she sleeps there only on Tuesdays and that the puppies change every month or so. Also, the dogs are strangely calm, not like normal puppies at all.
One Tuesday you will see the girl sneaking out of a taxi a couple of hundred meters up the road. In the car sits an elderly woman with three or four other girls and a lifeless heap of puppies.
They are professionals. The girls and the dogs are being used by a hard-shelled mother (if one may call this a mother). The puppies are probably drugged and die regularly, the girls never get to see a school and learn to sleep in the dirt as a profession.
The worst thing, in a twisted way, is to give them money for their performance.
Better leave a tip with that taxi driver. At least he works for a living.
Then, on the other hand, try not to harden too much and keep an eye out for people truly needing help. They are often the ones who don’t ask.
Morning Prayer
Posted: August 29, 2008 Filed under: World | Tags: morning prayer, prayer Leave a comment »I thank you for this new day and for the sleep that I had
I thank you for the clouds in the sky and the birds in the trees
I thank you for the health and happiness of my family and I pledge to do my very best to be a good husband and father
I pray for the strength and the insight to follow your will, so that my actions may be guided by care and compassion, and that I may overcome my ego and set aside resentments and fear
I humbly ask for your guidance in my decisions, so that I may be able to provide for my family and share with those who are in need or dear to me
I thank for this new day and I will use it to the best of my abilities
My Shame in Babel
Posted: August 29, 2008 Filed under: Asia | Tags: Asia, Bangkok, southeast asia, Thai, Thai language, Thailand, tonal language 1 Comment »
When we opened an office in Thailand I started learning the local language, as I always do when new to a country. Because Thai sounds like voice-over on a Donald Duck movie, I hired a teacher for one-on-one lessons.
As most “small” language Thai is not well documented and any word will have various translations depending on which book you open.
Thai doesn’t have many words, hardly any grammar; it has no articles, no inflection of noun, and no declension of objectives, no variation of verbs in regard to gender, number, tenses or cases and many other simplifying no-rules. A sentence like “If I would have known, I would have had the chance to use past perfect.” does defy translation.
Furthermore Thai belongs to the group of tonal languages. Tonal languages, as opposed to the non-tonal Indo-Germanic languages, root meaning in tone, not in grammar. Hence the same word may have a myriad of meanings depending on how you pronounce it while the written form remains identical.
“Leo” for example means “beer”, “right”, “quickly”, “come” and “here” and some unidentified food. Imagine you want to say: “Quickly, come here with the beer.”
My teacher described this tactfully as a three-dimensional language concept but I smelled the competitive disadvantage of a nation, especially when one realizes that the locals do not understand each other very well.
In my lessons, I focused on simple sentences of importance (like the one mentioned). After four weeks of study my teacher deemed me ready to order my favorite dish “Fried rice” which is “Khao pad” plus “Nung, krap” which is “One please”.
Confidently I walked up to a fried rice vendor and said “Khao pad, nung krap”. He looked irritated and called his wife.
By the time I had said “Khao pad” about eight times, the fried rice vendor and a group of spectators had organized someone who supposedly spoke English. He didn’t understand me neither.
Exhausted I pointed at the fried rice, said not a word and gestured “one”. That went through like a revelation. “Oooh, he wants fried rice! Man, why doesn’t he say so? God dammed foreigner.”
The bi-lingual Thai laughed, padded my shoulder and called out: “Yuu wiht eiis on.” and meant “You fried rice, one.”
I took another 6 months of private lessons, and then I gave up. Now, when in Bangkok I never say a word in Thai except a Buddhist “Mai pen rai.” which means “Never mind”, I hope.
How flat is that Mr. Friedman?
Andesine takes Gold in Carat Scamming
Posted: August 27, 2008 Filed under: Asia | Tags: Andesine, Asia, China, feldspar, gem, gem trade, gemstone, Mexican feldspar, Natural Tibet Andesine, Olympics Leave a comment »Olympia. Thank God. It is over. Finally! And well over too.
Congrats to the Chinese people. No major loss of face. Some expropriated and arrested grandmas, some faked children, some underage athletes, yes, yes, but nobody is perfect, especially not a big country.
What remains? For me as a gem trader one thing stands out: 50.000.000 carat of Andesine.
It turns out Andesine has won gold in scamming this year, even in the highly competitive field of gem traders.
For those who are not informed: Some, probably Chinese, mastermind bought 50 tons of pretty worthless Mexican feldspar years ago, artificially colored it red and created a new brand called “Natural Tibet Andesine”. Great name. Great origin. Especially for making it the Olympic gemstone and sell it to unsuspecting tourists at $500 per carat instead of $5, which is what it is actually worth.
Well, well, in the gem trade such a plot is no novelty; it has been done many time and it will be done in the future. What makes this case so refreshing is the scale of publicity. While Omega and GE have paid millions to be associated with Olympia 2008, Andesine’s mastermind just spread rumors and engraved the five rings into the gem.
So, we have a fake gemstone sold in millions as fake Olympic gem. That is gold in all scamming disciplines.
China, we forgive you. Nobody is perfect.
Good Health Care – Too Cheap
Posted: August 27, 2008 Filed under: Europe | Tags: Europe, health care, socialized medicine Leave a comment »
On my first visit back to Germany something bad got stuck in my eye. Alone on a high-speed train, I couldn’t see beyond my tears. I forced my hands off the panic button and sat still for three eternities, until we arrived in Freiburg. There I stumbled around like a sick pigeon waiting to be hit by a car.
Another couple of eternities later I plunged onto a homely sofa. Incomprehensibly, even the finest grappa does not heal sliced eyes, so later that night my friends decided to call an emergency doctor.
Back in Sri Lanka I might have had to wait for the village vet to get sober, but not so in Infrastructure-Germany. There you call a doctor at midnight and ask for help, which he renders without complaint. This doctor came promptly and got a glass splinter out of my eye. He thought that if I had waited through the night I might have lost that eye.
Thank you. What a relief. Truly grateful, I dropped a 100 euro bill into his bag, as I would have done in Asia. But the man didn’t want it.
I thought this is the usual polite “no need” and stuffed the money in his hand. Alas, now he was really offended. How dare I? He would not take any cash from me. That was illegal. Like bribery. He got so upset he might have stuck the splinter straight back into my eye.
My friends calmed him down, explaining that I had been living in South-East-Asia for many years and was not used to the German way.
Finally he accepted my apologies, and remarked that hundred euro were far too much anyway.
100 euro for my left eye too much? This professional came out of his warm bed to rescue my eye but was not allowed to accept more than the thrifty insurance would pay him. Strange customs.
The Gorilla City
Posted: August 22, 2008 Filed under: Africa | Tags: Africa, Congo, ecology, environment, environmentalism, gorilla, rain forest 1 Comment »
As far as I know Africa, we will have a hard time protecting them. We, the West, can’t even protect humans in the Congo, how are we going to stop those extra 120,000 from becoming bush meat? All Congo will go: “What the heck? We do have so many, they can hardly count them. Let’s fire up the BBQ.”
As any modern environmentalist can tell you, the only way of rescuing those gorillas is to exploit them. Let InterConti or Marriot build a hotel in the Rainforest for people to see the “The Gorilla City”. Of course they need to be strictly non-invasive and under UN protection. Profitable high-end tourism is the hype. Fly in and out with noise reduced helis only. People are paying millions to see the earth through a spacecraft window.
Less romantic but even more effective: Let us buy them. We pay the Congo $200 for each gorilla kept alive. I take 5 apes straight away. Who is with me? I am sure for $24m you can get a lot in Congo. The WWF is doing the controlling.
That would be good news.
Stealing is Bad
Posted: August 16, 2008 Filed under: Asia | Tags: Asia, gem, gemstone, ruby, sapphire, southeast asia, Sri Lanka 2 Comments »
Why is stealing no good? I wasn’t really sure, besides a vague moral feeling, until I was mugged last week. Now I realize stealing reduces the value of goods.
From an evolutionary point of view it is as easy as that. After the Vikings visited a French village there was not much left except what little the Vikings could carry away. The rest was broken, spilled, burned, dead or traumatized. The village, as a value producing entity, was worth more than the plunder the Vikings dragged away. However the French had little to say to the Vikings until somebody came up with the idea of giving away the whole village and renaming it Normandy.
On my smaller scale some Sri Lankans climbed over the roof and into my unprotected office. They emptied a tray of gems and ran. Nobody got hurt, no window was broken, and yet the loss for Sri Lanka as a whole was much greater than the value of the stolen goods.
Without certificates, without grading reports and with no international sales channel those gems are now worth only a fraction. Sri Lanka as an exporting country has suffered a loss.
I think our bible-writing forefathers knew that for society as a whole stealing is a bad deal.
There may also be a reason why organized international theft is much less frowned upon that stealing somebody’s workshop tools in the village. While the latter damages the same society that also punishes the theft the former causes damage to a remote and powerless entity. The reaction of society varies thus from hacking off hands to praising the homecoming conqueror.
That is why stealing is bad and the UN is such a good idea.
Jail for Bangkok
Posted: August 15, 2008 Filed under: Asia | Tags: Asia, Bangkok, corruption, Thailand, Thaksin Leave a comment »
Though you will find many Ferraris and Bentleys in Bangkok, nobody seems to pay taxes to build the roads with, or to organize law enforcement to keep people from driving like mad hogs. Traffic police here drive motorbikes that should go directly to scrap metal and earn a living by coercion of other, equally poor, motorcycle drivers.
Sure, it is abominable if a super rich politician evades taxes in a country with daily power cuts and a sewer system that makes its capital smell like wet dog or worse. But it is even more abominable how the Bangkok elite use the bad-business-men narrative to oust a legally voted Politician who doesn’t fit in their inherit-never-work power structure of last century. No good.
BTW: Did you know that in Thai jails the inmates get no food? You need friends on the outside to bring you food or you go hungry. Not that Mr. Thaksin will ever suffer this fate but if you buy some weed on a fullmoon party in Phuket you might get yourself a free diet with it.
The West’s Romance with Poverty
Posted: August 14, 2008 Filed under: Asia | Tags: Asia, poverty, southeast asia, Sri Lanka Leave a comment »
Yesterday I watched a report about Sri Lanka on discovery channel: The usual images of beaches, temples and smiling people.
It has bad teeth and dies early.”
