Saturday, February 25, 2006
Carbs Are Cheap / or / Very Important Personhood
I am in a so-called VIP lounge called "THE MORE" at the Taipei airport. The price of VIPhood -- or should I say VIPness -- here is a sum of the local currency which was described to me as "about $30US." I don't know the local x-rate, so I can only speculate on exactly what that will mean on my credit card bill. Maybe about 38.50. Which is cheap, if I consider it in relation to how much money I saved by flying economy class instead of business class, which would have entitled me to free use of the China Airlines VIP lounge, where I was politely refused entry earlier.
It's not a bad dealio. Sitting areas, TVs, meeting rooms, internet access, mechanical massage chairs... I think I even see a rack of free liquor across the room, but I don't drink, so that's of little concern to me.
And then there are the refreshments. Help yourself. All you care to consume. Ice cream (green tea, peanut, vanilla, and strawberry), sweet frozen concoctions, soft drinks, porridge (also corn-based, I figure-- white and carbo-licious), corn and seaweed soup, sticky buns, fruit cocktail... The theme I see here is: Carbohydrates are cheap. Protein, on the other hand, tends to cost about 10 times as much, and if you give people unrestricted access to it, you'll have difficulty running a profitable business at appealing prices. No, better to let them load up on sugar and sticky buns, until either the sugar high or the gluten stupor reaches the necessary threshold for a sense of satiation (or queasy aversion or simple paralysis) to take hold and stop the consumption cycle.
...
I once saw a description of my Myers-Briggs temperament type, ISFP, that described us as being both cynical and hopeful. I thought that was insightful, since those are two qualities that might seem superficially incompatible, but I think actually they're not, and I feel I have a lot of both. There can be hope in cynicism.
It is nice to be once again free of the vortex of Los Angeles. I am on my way to Thailand again, to see friends there for about a week. I also have a trip to San Diego planned after this, and then I'm off to Morocco for an EO conference. So I will be mostly away from L.A. for the next month. Works for me.
My music recording project has been on hiatus while I paid more attention to my "day job" for a while. But I expect to crank it up again in the coming months.
Time to hit the showers before my next longish flight to Bangkok. From there I will fly to Chiang Mai, barring unforeseen diversions.
See? Cynical, yet hopeful.
It's not a bad dealio. Sitting areas, TVs, meeting rooms, internet access, mechanical massage chairs... I think I even see a rack of free liquor across the room, but I don't drink, so that's of little concern to me.
And then there are the refreshments. Help yourself. All you care to consume. Ice cream (green tea, peanut, vanilla, and strawberry), sweet frozen concoctions, soft drinks, porridge (also corn-based, I figure-- white and carbo-licious), corn and seaweed soup, sticky buns, fruit cocktail... The theme I see here is: Carbohydrates are cheap. Protein, on the other hand, tends to cost about 10 times as much, and if you give people unrestricted access to it, you'll have difficulty running a profitable business at appealing prices. No, better to let them load up on sugar and sticky buns, until either the sugar high or the gluten stupor reaches the necessary threshold for a sense of satiation (or queasy aversion or simple paralysis) to take hold and stop the consumption cycle.
...
I once saw a description of my Myers-Briggs temperament type, ISFP, that described us as being both cynical and hopeful. I thought that was insightful, since those are two qualities that might seem superficially incompatible, but I think actually they're not, and I feel I have a lot of both. There can be hope in cynicism.
It is nice to be once again free of the vortex of Los Angeles. I am on my way to Thailand again, to see friends there for about a week. I also have a trip to San Diego planned after this, and then I'm off to Morocco for an EO conference. So I will be mostly away from L.A. for the next month. Works for me.
My music recording project has been on hiatus while I paid more attention to my "day job" for a while. But I expect to crank it up again in the coming months.
Time to hit the showers before my next longish flight to Bangkok. From there I will fly to Chiang Mai, barring unforeseen diversions.
See? Cynical, yet hopeful.
