Welcome back to your village Jay. For all the delights, adventures and fun of the strange new worlds, there's something like being a fish in water about home base.
The French Pacific places are expensive [New Caledonia, Tahiti]. For decades that has been so. It is another example of that fascinating economic fact that despite financial hydrostatic pressure, voltage, gravitational pull and arbitrage opportunity, a large hamburger purchasing power parity disjunction can exist seemingly permanently. I don't even think of going to those places as the small pleasure of a US$22 bowl of chicken soup at a roadside restaurant conflicts too greatly with my decades of battling at a low pay rate and I have the option and luxury and satisfaction of rewarding instead a boy in a Beijing restaurant who works from 6.30 am to nearly midnight for a pittance. Tarken, our son, gave him his bike [4 weeks old] when he left for snowboarding in Canada, which cost 2 bowls of chicken soup when new. I cannot create in my mind that 2 bowls of chicken soup = 1 new bicycle. When I was young and working at anything to get money to buy a used bicycle, a bicycle was a major deal. I still can't get over the devaluation of bicycles and the rise of chicken soup. Neither can I get used to the similar devaluation of cars, which were temples, the core of the universe, worth fighting and dying for.
If I was a chicken I might have a different point of view. The boy would cook delicious meals which cost [for the beef meal, which was a good feed] 15 kwai, renminbi or yuan, which is NZ$3 which is US$2. So I could get 10 of those nutritious meals for one bowl of chicken gruel. I am certain that I would also have enjoyed the meal more than the soup. I dare say a meal loaded down with beef would have cost far more than the chicken soup at your roadside restaurant.
<I have always found win-win games to be missing that little bit of extra something, perhaps the special sauce called glee, when compared to win-lose games, of which on-line Unreal Tournament Last Man Standing Death Match is one, and option wagering is another.
Oops, almost got lost in the shuffle, my Annaly January Put strike 15 also expired worthless to my opposite number, allowing me to record a USD 0.60/shr gain. So, at least for this game round, my opposite number died so that I may live>
Humans are indeed a dichotomy in that respect. Our amazing gains are from the win-win agreements. But our chimpoid limbic emotions are based on win-lose and glee is a lot of fun. Worth risking a lot to achieve.
I felt some envy as I read of your battles and glories, with the NEM counterparty being obliterated. A win/lose position is very exciting, fun and gains can be large in a short time. I feel like some invisible zen master sitting calmly humming OMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyawnmmmmmmm as the battles rage.
Unlike raiding a peaceful village and disrupting the Ommmmsters there, tilling their soil and dancing their happy jigs to their pleasant music as the seasons pass, your gains, or losses are at the expense of voluntary participants. You can battle with a counterparty over the QUALCOMM village, creating peaks and troughs in the price, and I sit there placidly watching the battle, losing nothing and gaining nothing with your victory or loss. The subscribers buy, the staff are paid, tribute to King George II is paid and dividends delivered to me. The QCOM villagers are happily going about their business. It's nice, but joining your battles and experiencing the glee, fearing the misery, feeling the sweat, the pulse, the wide-awake adrenaline-boosted win-lose drama would be a lot of fun. If skilled, or lucky, it would also be very profitable and even a noble exploit as the aim is to better match the share price to reality than the opposition can, with deception available as a tool [such as selling a large tranche to drop the price to confuse the opposition who might misunderestimate the true value, thereby allowing a large, quiet, accumulation at a low price of even more than was sold in a shock troop attack .... drool, pant....].
Maybe that's why King George II attacked Saddam. Win-win reasonable development was just too boring. Some of the old chimpoid territorial challenge was needed to brighten the day. Win-win peacekeeping for soldiers must be very boring compared with firing 1000s of rounds a second from a AC-130 Spectre using night vision at fleeing terrorists.
Happy New Year, let out the monkeys and let's see if we get Winn-win or Winn-lose.
Mqurice |
