How to get skiers’ attention?

Presently, both Alterra and Vail Resorts must be to their wits end, wondering how their multi-resorts, season passes will sell.

They’ve already engineered a few rebates to make up for a truncated 2019-20 season, along with some insurance program to go along with a post-Covid-19 uncertainty, but still, in the absence of clear business operating models, there is little eagerness or enthusiasm on the part of the season-pass purchasers, in view of early and arbitrary cut of dates.

In my view, there’s must be a better way to shake things up, break the public’s lingering anxiety, generate cash and excitement, than the lukewarm approach from the two ski-resorts behemoths.

This past Friday, “Portes du Soleil”, the largest international ski interconnect straddling France and Switzerland, offered 5,000 season ski passes at about half price, on a first-come, first-served basis, and sold them all within hours.

Fast, simple, noticeable and exciting!

This highly disruptive approach is the way to speak to skiers that are on the coronavirus fence and to steer enthusiasm…

Can both Alterra and Vail Resorts show the same creative imagination?

The bike quandary

Because I’m advancing in age and perhaps also because I have bit the ground and bitten the dust too many times while riding, I’m not as enthused as I used to straddle my bicycle when winter is over.

Yet, against all odds, that just what I did on Wednesday. I only a rode a short 3 miles, but I was happy to have broken the spell and reconciled myself with my two-wheeler.

Another reason beyond age and painful falls is the fact that bike riding is fraught with technical situations like tire problems, drive train issues and a myriad of pesky little details that contribute to making the experience filled with potentially annoying incidents.

The same doesn’t apply to skiing, as much as that sport is also burdened with equipment and adjustments of all kinds, but once one gets on the slopes, the likelihood of problem is minimal compared to what happens with biking.

This is probably why nothing beats walking or hiking when it comes to recreation and piece of mind. This say, I’ll be good sport and I remain open as well as willing to start this new riding season!

Back at the dentist!

On Wednesday, I returned to see the dentist for my bi-annual cleaning.

At first, I was a bit apprehensive about all the Covid-19 viruses on the look-out, ready to swarm inside my mouth and the rest of my organs, then I relented and thought that it might in fact be a much safer experience than visited my neighboring grocery store.

When I got there, someone read my temperature and since I’m always a cool dude, they let me proceed to washing my hands, then my mouth with a concoction that could kill a large rat, and then upon sitting in the dreaded chair.

I was surrounded by a variety of engineered air flows that were supposed to keep the dentist sheltered from all the viruses that might lingered in me, and the new ones that were still unknown from the scientific community.

As of this writing, I’m still alive and exhibit none of the dreaded symptoms yet. I don’t feel quite ready to stroll on a crowded California beach yet, but my confidence about normality is going up one tiny little notch!

Arapahoe reopens the hard way

Yesterday, the State of Colorado just approved the partial reopening of Arapahoe Basin with a bunch of caveats, like no more than of 600 users per day that had to register on line the day before.

Upon arriving at the resort, skiers had to show their printed confirmation email to be able to park.

The lift lines and the scanning have also been redesigned in order to spread visitors. Interestingly enough and to prevent lift attendants from having to hold fixed-grip chairs, these lifts were running slower.

The kicker, though, was that face coverings were required to be worn if six feet of social distance couldn't be maintained, which would mean that the chairs are likely to be filled to capacity if skier faces are covered. This wasn't what we observed when I saw a video of the event. Only 2 person per quad-chair!

That’s rather good news, while the rest seems very complicated. Skiing is already awfully complicated as it is. Can we simplify it a bit?

Resurrecting the TV remote control

I’m trying to lower the sound on my smart TV and I suddenly realize that the remote control isn’t working. I go and change the two AA batteries, but nothing happens.

My wife suggest that the new batteries could be bad too. I switch them with the one contained in a similar remote control from the master bedroom; still nothing.

Then, after replacing the batteries, I check if that other remote one works on the living room TV, and yes, it does turn it off.

So the problem isn't with the batteries, but with the remote that no longer works. I conclude that I'll have to buy a new one. Fifty bucks? Maybe. I google “Problem with Samsung smart TV remote”, and I see a listing for replacement remotes in the $20 range only.

Then I notice a hyperlink saying “How can I solve remote operation problem?” I click on it out of curiosity, follow the instructions with a great deal of skepticism, and bingo! the unbelievable happens, my remote resurrects and life goes on...

When time is so precious, patience runs thin...

We're all chasing time; there never seem to be enough of it, as most of us want to “move the needle” ever so faster. This frantic pursuit of doing more things with less time is having a disastrous effect on our patience.

The entire humanity wants everything immediately and has forgotten that many life elements still take time, just like the seedlings growing in a vegetable garden, the learning process, the seasons and most of life in general.

This disconnect has pushed hunger for time and need for patience in the two opposite ends of the spectrum and is tearing us apart. Our current pandemic situation is just one additional stressor that makes that dichotomy more visible and much painful.

We only need learn how to rediscovering patience and taking life a tiny bit slowly...

Extracting positive stuff out of this crisis

The terrible Covid crisis gives us two choices: Either, dwell on how bad things are and might be, or constructively plan to make our life as most satisfying as possible, no matter what the external circumstances are or will turn out to be.

This is vital, since the on-going bombardment of bad news has a deleterious effect on our mental health.

Not only does it paralyzes us, like the bite of a predator upon its prey, before it kills it, but it wastes our precious, limited time.

Better have a series of busy plans instead that can include exercise, sports, gardening, home-improvements, entertainment and a myriad of tasks that were always on our list but never, ever got our real attention.

It’s never been a better time to addressing those and getting them once and for all out of the way. There still will be plenty to do when the virus is vanquished...

The link between regrets and happiness

In following up with yesterday’s blog, I feel that the intensity of regrets should always be associated with the degree of happiness (or unhappiness) they might cause.

In fact, there are two issues with regrets. There are decisions that entail foreseeable consequences and those decisions for which the outcome is impossible to anticipate.

As an example, we once purchased two adjoining beautiful building lots in a new development and instead of keeping each one separate, we decided to built a home straddling both. This was a mistake that was understandable from the get-go, but that we choose to ignore.

I’ve made many more decisions in which the end result was basically impossible to foretell, because it is too subjective or too hard to quantify, and it almost amounted to a coin-toss.

In fact, it would end up being like tossing a coin if I didn’t feel very strongly about it, like through elements like intuition, passion or very specific dispositions. When decision are made on that basis, regrets are seldom part of the end-result.

In conclusion, if you want to make regret-free decisions, always look at their impact on your happiness as you define it. You will seldom go wrong!

My biggest regret?

I don’t have many regrets, but if I had to pick one that importantly affected my life, I would say that it was my lack of focus and dedication when I was in 6th, 7th and 8th grades.

In these critical first years of middle school, I did absolutely nothing and didn’t lose three years, but four as I had to redo 8th grade. To this day, I still can’t explain why I was so aimless and lazy at school. For one thing, I was not mature at all.

Also, I wouldn’t or couldn’t admit that I wouldn’t understand concepts and dug a deeper and deeper hole for myself by not asking for help early enough into the process. This said, even if I had asked, it’s not certain that there would have been someone available to step in and help me.

This was a terrible and traumatic experience and I also blame the fact that I had no one to guide or coach me, based on my behavior and my dismal results. Would some help have worked? Perhaps, but again, it’s hard to say so with any certainty.

Was it my destiny? I hope not. In retrospect, I’m certain that I wasted the most important resource that I was given, that is the combination of time and ability to learn, but again who will ever know? When all is said and done, it can only be answered by the question?

Would I be happier now if I had follow the path I’m describing here? The answer is “Probably not much more, and perhaps, not as much”. Another great score in the “No regrets” category!

My short career as a surveyor

When I began teaching skiing at Avoriaz, France, my greatest worry and main preoccupation, aside from all the fun I derived from instructing. was “What am I going to do during Spring, Summer and Fall?”

I didn’t want to be in the restaurant business like the rest of my family, didn’t contemplate opening a souvenir shop like my brother eventually did, and was looking for that magic job that I would enjoy and the would make me enough money to survive the rest of the year.

I had thought that being a surveyor might be the ticket. Of course, I neither had the experience nor the education and the required certification to start on my own, and would have needed to attend a specialized school full-time for 5 years in either Le Mans, Strasbourg or Paris.

These weren’t feasible options. So, instead, the eternal optimist that I am, I figured that I could start as an apprentice and self-study to pass the certification. Just half-a-century ago, I wrote to a bunch of surveyors.

One in St. Gervais, a ski and mountain resort near Chamonix, France, responded, and offered me a job at minimum wage. I just had to secure some lodging and was in business.

After a couple of month on the job (this was in the low-tech days, decades before GPS and modern digital tools), I realized that while it was a pleasant outdoors occupation, it was quite boring, non-creative and repetitive.

At the same time, the amount of study required on my own, looked downright overwhelming, not to say impossible, and I bravely decided to throw the towel soon enough to get a summer job helping my brother selling souvenirs...

Why does America sucks so much?

My question can be answered in looking into the history of vacuum cleaners.

The first manual vacuum cleaner was invented by Daniel Hess of West Union, Iowa, back in 1860.

America and humanity had to wait until the end of the 19th century to see the introduction of powered cleaners, although early types used some variation of blowing air to clean instead of suction.

But it’s in fact a Brit, Walter Griffiths to whom we owe the first electric and portable vacuum-cleaning device that was marketed at the domestic market as early as 1905.

So my point is, while continental Europe was still sweeping its kitchens and bedrooms, America and England were already sucking away.

This explains why you seldom see Americans using a broom (most don’t know how to, anyway), but must admit that owning and operating a vacuum cleaner is as American as apple pie, while expert “sweepers” can only be found in Europe, North Korea and the rest of the developing world!

Why I never owned a truck ?

After living for 43 years in America, I’ve never owned a pick-up truck. This could be seen as un-American, but it’s a fact.

It’s true however, than when I first came to live in the United States, I kind of liked the little Datsun and Toyota pick-up trucks I saw everywhere in California when I visited that state.

In fact, I couldn’t own one in New York where I lived, because for some arcane reason, pick-ups were classified as commercial vehicles and I would have been barred from the Parkways that I used for my daily commute.

Aside from that consideration, though, I would have been hard-pressed to buy a two-seater truck and went for a small station-wagon instead. Then over the years, the typical American pick-up truck put on some weight, gained huge volume, stood progressively higher up and became a “macho” mode of transportation.

As I moved to the mountains, I wanted four-wheel drive and back in the mid-80s, any truck offered that kind of traction, so this was another reason why I missed on the truck experience.

Later one, extended-cab, all-wheel drive and comfort features offered by these big vehicles were not attractive enough to sway me away from the SUV. Besides, I didn’t approve of their gas-guzzling behavior, enormous size and heavy weight.

This is simply why pick-up trucks and me passed each other during my American lifetime without even making any intimate and lasting contact.

Low-risk Covid places in the USA...

Yesterday, the New York Times published a United States map showing, where there’s an increased risk for severe Covid-19 illness, by comparing it with the national average.

It was based on the estimated proportion of adults in each county who have one or more of these conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease and chronic lung disease, using survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the current crisis, a majority of patients hospitalized with the viral outbreak, had one or more of these underlying health conditions.

This of course has nothing to do with an individual’s chance of catching the disease, but it shows that Summit County, Utah, where Park City is located is a rather privileged place.

I thought it was our dry air that preserved us, when in fact it seems to be our good physical shape.

One serious reason to avoid West Virginia; instead, a good one to live and stay put in Park City!

What I believe will happen to the economy

Now that everyone seems excited about going back to work and making some real money instead of counting on government’s hands-outs, the big questions that is fair to ask can be formulated as follows:

• Will the economy immediately spring back to life? 
• Instead will it take more time? 
• Then, how long do we have to wait till its normal life resumes? 
• Or finally, will it ever be the same again? 

Based on the above my take is that it will take at least tree years for the economy to dust itself up before standing up again and resuming a new “normal”. However, I don’t expect this new “normal” to be ever as buoyant as it was in March of 2020.

It only will be a fraction of what we had then, and many elements will change forever. For one thing, our hugely increase indebtedness will drag us down and will force government to tax us more. Expect GDP to sink between 15 to 25 percent in most countries.

Deflation will be part of our daily lives and both the housing and the stock market will suddenly become a lot more affordable. Governments will be expected to take better care of their citizens, especially in the area of healthcare, safety net, and global environment, and this too will cost immensely.

Finally, leisure, tourism, business travel and education as we know them, will all change tremendously.

Let’s check back in three years from now...

Turkish vacations!

Fifty years ago this very day, I was leaving from Paris to Kuşadası, a beach resort on Turkey’s Aegean coast.

Along with my colleagues from the Avoriaz ski school, we were on our way to a one-week vacation at Club Med. Great spot, great vacation. We landed in Izmir, took an excursion to Istanbul, complete with a visit of Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace.

The trip was paid by a slush fund of sorts produced by some withholding from our earnings. It worked a bit like this:

A beginning ski instructor with a “Capacitaire” level, like myself, would see a 40% withholding from his or her earnings. A ski instructor with a “Kindergarden” level (mostly women in those days) would get hit for 50%. A “Auxillaire” level would only get 25% taken away, while the “National” level would contribute just 15%.

In addition, fluency in a foreign language, a mountain-guide or ski coach certification would shave 5% off the withholding.

These monies would pay for the rent, the administrative staff (generally one person), for the technical director (payed as much as the top-earning instructor) and the general director (top-earning instructor, plus about 15%).

When and if there was money left, it would be split between all the certified instructors and, in that particular case, it paid for this wonderful trip. It’s pretty clear that I contributed a good portion of my earning towards its cost!

The case for improved best practices

Over the years, automobiles and smart phones have improved by leaps and bound, thank for continuously improved best practices. I’d love to say the same about home appliances, but their reliability has taken a turn for the worst, as cost and bad quality electronic components have deteriorated their once reasonable performance and reliability.

Our government has also followed the lackluster appliance script of “re-inventing the wheel” when it should have instead, followed an incremental approach to best practices in healthcare and pandemics as they were told to do.

That is, when a new administration comes in, and it religiously destroys things that worked well, and were implemented by a previous administration, for sake of “marking its territory”.

This is why today we have the Covid-19 mess in the United States, simply because Trump is engaged in destroying everything that Obama and previous administrations set up for sake of showing off.

Instead of failing to anticipate the crisis, yet alone respond to it in a satisfactory manner, we have made things worst for all of us. Basically, as the “World’s healthcare leader”, as we like to pad ourselves on the back, we should have done better than Germany, South Korea, Taiwan or even China.

We did not, instead our performance was much worst, by a large margin. We should have instead immediately inquired and asked about these countries “best practices”, but were too proud and too stubborn, particularly with someone like Donald Trump as our president, the man who thinks he knows it all...

Unnerved by the market?

If you are an investor and are “significantly” invested in the stock market, these days are hard to take and require a strong resilience and an uncanny ability to ignore the advice that comes from all places.

Some of these pieces of advice are right, other are wrong, but there’s no way to know which one to follow now, as no one is able to correctly predict the future.

Well, let’s console ourselves by looking at the opportunity the situation brings to strengthening one’s character!

Fake news hit home!

Today, I received in the mail a sample copy of “The Epoch Time”. I took a glance at it and quickly realized it was a piece of propaganda.

In fact, The Epoch Times is a newspaper extension of the Falun Gong, a new Chinese religious movement.

A same group also operates the New Tang Dynasty Television (NTD). Published in Chinese since May 2000, the paper is either sold or distributed free-of-charge in 35 countries, including various international regional editions.

The Epoch Times websites are blocked in mainland China. That media is primarily known for promoting far-right politicians across Europe and the United States, and Donald Trump in particular, as the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after Trump campaign itself.

The group's news sites and YouTube channels have also spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccination propaganda. So, simply use that newspaper for your cat litter!

The likely shape of next ski season...

Absent a forceful anti-Covid 19 medication or an effective vaccine, this upcoming ski season may have to happen under an innovative protocol. Since no one knows what it will be, let me make it up for you. Ready?

Transportation: 
The easiest way to come to a ski resort will be to drive there with one’s own car. Getting from California to Park City is no big deal. Try to drive from Chicago or New York, that’s another story altogether.

Flying will resume but what percentage of seats can be safely used? Only 30 or 50 percent? How expensive will it be to fly? Won’t many of us be to scared to board an airplane? I would think so, and all these consideration might compound into a downward spiral.

Lodging: 
Let’s assume that skiers are staying in sanitized hotels and condos and that this part should be simple and easy. Further, it might be possible to see a significant drop in rates.

Restaurants and bars : 
This summer should provide ample time to test a viable protocol for these public spaces. Again, the authorized percentage of space occupied will impact the capacity of these facilities and maybe the cost of food and beverage.

Finally, my favorite, Skiing:
Unless skiers aren’t part of the same household, a double chair will only sit one skier, a triple chair about the same. Only a quadruple might accommodate two skiers sitting on opposite ends. Then what do you do with a six-person chair? Two or three passenger? I’d vouch for just two.

Now let’s talk about gondolas. A four-passenger will get two folks at best, just be careful when your diagonal opposite sneezes! An eight people gondola, may receive four at the very best. A 35-people 3S gondola will be lucky if it can fit 8 people and a 100 passenger tram might get 10 or 12 skiers inside at the very most.

So, as you see, lifts are likely to be the critical bottleneck and it’s likely that uphill capacity on busy day can only be 30 to 40 percent of normal. This applies to big lines early in the morning off the base as well as most of the day on popular lifts and during holidays and busy weekends.

Of course, one key element will be how ski resorts will manage the humongous lines that will result and will they get as much money for their passes if folks have too wait a lot; I’ll let you guess that one!

If your skiing don’t improve, your patience will by leaps and bounds!

Conclusion:
Based on the above premises, expect a ski season to be only 30 to 40 percent of normal, unless skiers decide that making many turns is worth a life with less accumulated years. Let’s check that in April 2021!

Mother’s Day Corona-style

This weekend, we got together with our son, his wife and our grandson to celebrate Mother’s Day in a low-key, casual setting, at their place.

We toasted the special day with a… Corona beer in hand, and had a great time, until very late into the evening. Of course, most of our discussions centered on the pandemic and our respective future if we all make it alive through the current ordeal.

We remained optimistic and wowed to stick around for as long as we possible could!

Wonderful Park City Library

We are big fans and great users of the Park City public library.

We missed it a lot during the initial lock-down phase of Covid-19, but on Monday, May 4th, it opened a curbside pick-up in front of its building.

What patrons have to do is quite simple: Select and order books on the library website from their home, get a confirmation by email and come over and pick it up.

Once there, call the number posted, just open up the trunk or hatch of the vehicle, and a librarian will drop the books inside.

The first books we ordered that way were biographies of Beyoncé and Mikaela Shiffrin (I didn’t know there was already one for the young ski champ), only to find out when we came that the volumes we selected that these were… for kids!

While this kept us a bit younger, it was another great lesson of the “live and learn” type!

When uncertainty kills us

What should I be doing during this lock-down and pandemic period?

Learn Spanish, mathematics or Rocky Mountains mycology, among others things I’ve always wanted to know better, or simply do more projects around the house?

Of course, I should. I simply have no good excuse for my lack of motivation, except of course, Covid-19 that systematic culprit that’s been eroding my willpower and has put me into semi-permanent state of hibernation.

In fact, it’s not the microscopic virus, but the immense uncertainty that surrounds the pandemic, our absence of clear knowledge about the infection, it’s fuzzy calendar and watching the ignorance and hesitancy of our governments in the face of its devastating effects.

Uncertainty has a paralyzing power and it sucking any natural drive out of us. So, don’t feel too bad if things that should be taken care of aren’t handled around the house, kids aren’t quite home schooled as they should and a few things, here and there are falling through the cracks.

You’re simply witnessing the eroding power of uncertainty at work over you lives. Just relax, it may eventually pass...

The lovable war criminal

This week, we watched the two-2 hour series of PBS “American Experience”, about the presidency of George W. Bush.

Always historic in nature and in the treatment of its subject matter, this TV show is of excellent quality and well produced.

It showed basically how an incompetent, sheltered son, rose to the gubernatorial seat of Texas, before becoming a two-term president of the United States.

It also showed how his unpreparedness and ego drove the country into a wasteful war in Iraq and a bunch of other bad decisions he made during the eight years of his fateful presidency.

At times, the piece asserted that Bush was a smart person, but failed to show that the Iraq adventure cost half-a-millions lives among the citizens of that country, plus the death of close to 4,000 American and more that 30,000 wounded among them.

The Iraqi carnage is enough to elevate Mr. Bush to the status of war criminal, even though he seems to be much congenial than the likes of Pol-Pot, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and appears sociable enough to have a beer with.

The other problem with that is that after getting treated, he’s now a teetotaler... 

Still discovering my computer!

In early 2016, tired of laptops and all-in-one computers that broke down and couldn’t be repaired, I went back to purchasing a conventional PC, with one big box and a separate screen.

Made by Dell, the machine has served me well for over 4 years (a record!) and Windows 10 that runs on it has performed almost flawlessly. My only problem was with the monitor sound system.

The sound was very low both off its speakers, and through my headset when it was plugged into it (as it should). It only worked fine when I plugged it directly into the box, but this wasn’t really practical as the cord wasn’t long enough.

A few days ago, quite accidentally, I discovered that they were almost invisible touch control-buttons along side the lower right edge of the screen to adjust the sound and the image being displayed.

In more than four years I only had be able to identify the much larger, albeit hardly visible “on-off” switch, situated to the lower right of the screen.

This goes to say that we learn everyday and that with electronics delivered without instructions these days, it’s increasingly hard not to miss some vital functions that would make life that much easier. But I guess, still better later than never!

Can flying ever be the same?

Just before the pandemic, flying was starting to get a black eyes, here and there, as it was seen as overly polluting and creating a huge carbon footprint per passenger mile. In addition a drastic reduction in vehicular traffic is restoring clean air everywhere.

Today, with passenger air traffic 95% down in America alone, it will take a long time to bring back fliers to sit inside a narrow tube, especially for many long hours, and folks will definitely prefer road trips at first as a mode of evasion.

What’s certain is that international travel that’s likely to be subject to delayed governmental authorizations, will take a very long time before it gains critical mass again.

What will this means to mountain destination resorts like Park City? A tepid summer may be still be followed by a disappointing winter in which a vast majority of visitors may be locals or skiers driving from the nearby Pacific Coast.

What made Park City so hot, just like what made my hometown valley of Morzine, France so busy, was the fly-in market that landed in the nearby airports of Salt Lake City or Geneva, Switzerland, and this way of recreating will take a long time to recover.

To add insult to injury, once back in the air and after “priming the pump” with cheap fares and low jet fuel cost, airlines may have to raise their rates to accommodate less than full loads while discount carriers like Easyjet, might simply disappear.

Finally, companies will discover that video conferencing is going to cut deep into corporate meetings and traveling. Would this usher new technology like small electric airplanes that operate more like taxis or limousines? This is quite possible, but it might take some time.

At any rate, the pre-Covid-19 carefree and profligate air travel might never reappear as we knew it, opening some room to rail, high-speed trains, or better yet, Hyper-loop transportation.

Australia’s turn to lead…

Except for the Portillo World Ski Championships back in 1966, the Southern Hemisphere ski industry has never led the way, but now it might again, in a huge way, as its gears up for its “Covid-19, 2020” winter season when it’s supposed to open some of its slopes on June 6.

While South America will do what it can, one might look to Australia for leadership in that matter. I recently read a press release from the ASAA, its industry association: “The Australian ski season will begin its 2020 ski season only with the blessing of governments and health authorities, and within their guidelines, the industry will not in any way pre-empt what the decisions of government and the health authorities may be.” 

This said, they don’t seem to have a plan, or have thought of one yet, that could be submitted to their governmental authorities.

I doubt that they’ve been consulting either with NSAA, their American counterpart on the matter, and while Vail Resorts owns Perisher in New South Wales, ASAA might begin by using some of the U.S. guidelines, but who knows? Time will tell us pretty soon!

Winners vs. Losers…

That “Winner vs. Loser” subject has been exacerbated by Trump and was very much in vogue in the mid-seventies when I immigrated to the United States.

It made quite an impression on me and became a key element of my business education and understanding of Corporate America.

During this pandemic, I received this business-minded message that extolled the virtues of being a “Winner” as opposed to a “Loser”.

Today, while I still agree that this particular approach served me well when I followed it the best I could, I don't see it now as neatly as I used to, and see it as a bit contrived, lacking empathy and being a bit exploitative.

In other terms, you must be a winner to be worth anything, and being any bit less than that, pigeon-holes you into a totally undesirable human category. How do you feel about it?

The quest for beneficial simplicity

I’ve never been a fan of complexity, but rather a stunned, admirer of simplicity.

Let’s face it; the purest inventions, the stunning designs and best ideas always are the simplest ones. The kind of which makes us say, or enviously consider: “I should have thought of it...”

Up until now and whenever I could, I always pondered if my way was the simplest one. That was before I became horrified by both the invading and paralyzing forces of complexity.

Now, my first consideration will always be: “Have I well thought, researched, tested and verified enough times, that my solution is absolutely the simplest, possible one?”

The end of a great ski season

My first ski season as an instructor at Avoriaz, France, ended fifty years ago, also on a Sunday, May 3.

It ended with at least 5 meters of snow accumulated by the top tram station (not shown on the picture; suffice to say that as skiers were disembarking from the tram, they had simply no stair to climb down!)

That spring and early summer, the snow would take forever to melt.

With plenty of regrets, while I was just beginning to have fun, I had to put aside the boards and take a job as assistant surveyor in St. Gervais, another ski and mountain resort, at the foot of Mt. Blanc.

I wanted to see if that job could lead to a career that could dovetail with my addiction with skiing.

More about this later…

Days of plenty

Even though I’m retired and, to a degree, locked down, all my days are an avalanche of terrific moments to which I’m looking forward to.

Nothing is repulsive, uninteresting or just dull. Every little piece of the day brings a chuck-full of good things.

Consider this:

From my early morning meditation to listening to the news on NPR radio, appreciating a different breakfast everyday, a tonic 4 mile walk, some work and browsing on my computer. This is followed by a nice lunch, an afternoon project, seasonal and different.

Then it's time for another 2,5 mile walk, the five o’clock drink, a good dinner, some TV and some good reading before turning in, all in the wonderful company of my wife.

My only sin is that I don’t even take the time to reflect and congratulate myself on a wonderful day, that I’m already anticipating the next one before I close my eyes.

What a life!

Don’t demonize China, replace it!

There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t hear that Trump is demonizing China, either for the virus it sent us or for some unfair trade practices.

Likewise, I keep getting emails inferring that Covid-19 is a Chinese conspiracy, that the country is overtly malevolent, or that we ought to boycott China altogether.

My take on this is slightly different in that I feel that if we don’t like the Chinese as our top manufacturer and supplier or even competitor we should replace them with someone else.

This could be the Vietnamese, the Indians, the Indonesians or their Malaysian neighbors, unless we’re a bit more gutsy, imaginative and inventive, to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI), or find enough robots to make labor costs a non-issue in the whole process.

AI and robots are likely to be at the center of our near future and why not mobilize the nation to harness these resources in order to gain independence from the Chinese if we can’t stand their way of doing business and their perceived belligerence?

When all is said and done, all is fair in love, and war, as well as in business, of course!