Bureaucratic Idiocy Isn't Limited To The Public Sector

While there is no match for the government when it comes to inefficiency and operational chaos, private industry is not free from this. Once upon a time we had a certificate of deposit at Countrywide Bank. Then Countrywide Bank went down the drain and was acquired by Bank of America. If one drew a bell curve showing the interest rates paid by financial institutions, Bank of America and Countrywide would be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So naturally, when our former Countrywide, now Bank of America CD matured, we opted to close the account in the seven day grace period. Except that Bank of America told Mrs. Chandavkl they were not authorized to close it. They told her she had to go back to New Hampshire where she opened the account. Of course this didn't make any sense as we had opened the account in Pasadena, not New Hampshire.

So even though I was in San Francisco, it was my turn to get them to pay off. Unlike the purely retail branch Mrs. Chandavkl went to, I went to a banking center on New Montgomery St., where I was directed to the Personal Banking department, with a row of stately desks manned by equally stately personal bankers. I explained the situation to Miss Shi, and she started punching in my information. Nothing came up on her computer. She explained that the Countrywide system would not be integrated with the Bank of America system until 2012, so she had no access to my account and that she couldn't help me. That kind of explained the New Hampshire comment, as the former Countrywide accounts had been relegated somewhere back east for administrative purposes. However, that didn't make me any more understanding. "You mean I can't withdraw my own money from Bank of America? So this is like Hotel California?" "What do you mean?" Miss Shi asked. "Don't you know the song 'Hotel California"? "Yes," she replied. "Well, you can check out any time but you can never leave. So you can deposit money in this bank, but you can't take it out." This embarrased her so she consulted with one of the other personal bankers, who told her to call the customer service center. They directed her how to execute the transaction, but I was probably there nearly an hour before I got everything taken care of.

Of course I'm familiar with issues of post-merger integration and I know that it takes banks a good amount of time to mesh their systems. But it's been three years since Bank of America acquired Countrywide, so they should have integrated by now. Also it's not like an out of state acquistion where you can just walk into your old bank branch that now has a different name. Obviously the sooner we totally disassociate ourselves with Bank of America, the better.

An Uncommon Nightmare

While my dreams are often unusual, defying time, space and logic, I seldom have nightmares. But last night's dream probably falls into the nightmare category, particularly since it was one of the few times where I could not immediately distinguish the dream from reality. Specifically I felt as if I were unable to get up from bed, as if somebody was sitting on me. Managing to get free I then left the bedroom and encountered other family members who told me it was almost 8 o'clock. I took a considerable period of time for me to realize that I was still asleep (if that makes any sense).

The interesting thing about this dream is that my daughter once had a similar experience when she was a teenager. She felt that she was awake, lying in bed, with somebody or something preventing her from leaving the prone position. She mentioned this to my dad, who though very intelligent and logical, also had some interesting beliefs, including things relating to paranormal activity. I think she was looking for a paranormal explanation from my dad, but he told her it was really a dream and she had never actually been immobilized. Apparently he had heard of such dream sequences before.

I do recall one other instance of not distinguishing being awake or asleep. I remember waking up one morning and looking up on the ceiling where the hard wired smoke alarm was usually positioned. But instead there was a large object, kind of light a small satellite or gigantic Christmas ornament with flashing lights hovering over the room. Frankly, I don't remember ever waking up from that dream, and I'm only assuming it was a dream because it couldn't have been real.

Who Moves Slower--The Federal Government or the City of Los Angeles?

I seldom watch much in the way of daytime TV, but when we were in the breakfast room at the Waikiki Hilton Royal Kuhio for five days I got to see some of the early morning news shows that I ordinarily don't view. One feature that made an impression on me was the story of some kind of upgraded military vehicle which was essentially like a new model year edition of an existing automobile, similar enough such that a trained user of the old model would only need a day's worth of training to get up to speed on the revised equipment. So when will the new model be available for use? In 2019, 9 years after the process to update the vehicle began. Why so long? Because of Department of Defense labyrithinal requirements for procuring "new" items of equipment. Can you imagine if it takes 9 years to provide a simple improvement of an existing item used by the government how much money the government is wasting in implementing this process?

Recently I was witness on a much smaller scale as to the snail's pace at which the city of Los Angeles operates. Two and a half years ago we set off our home burglar alarm when our motion detector thought a helium balloon in our den was an intruder. This cost us a $110 fine for generating a false alarm, which we accept as being our fault. However on top of that we were fined another $100 for not having an alarm permit. Well I have been paying the $30 alarm permit fee faithfully every year, so while I paid the $110 false alarm fee, I explained that I had a current permit in force, providing the permit number and a copy of my payment for the year in question. I figured that the $100 portion would be quickly waived, which seemed to be the case as I received no further requests to pay the $100. Until a year and a half later when I get a letter from a collection agency in New York saying that the city's receivable from me had been assigned to them for collection. Very fortunately for me the collection agency informed me how to formally protest the imposition of the $100 assessment for not having an alarm permit, which I quickly filed with the Los Angeles Police Commission. I was hoping that would take care of the matter, but I couldn't be sure because I never heard back from them. Until a year later when I received a notice that some subcommittee of the police commissioner had voted in a hearing on December 21, 2010 to waive the assessment. I'm not sure what part of this tale is the most appalling. The incompetence in mistakenly assessing me for not having a permit; ignoring my documented response which could have been easily verified in five minutes by a chimp. The glacial pace at which these events played out. The fact that it takes a meeting of the police commission to undo the mistake. Or the amount of city money that was obviously wasted by this process. No wonder why Los Angeles may go bankrupt by 2013.

It Never Rains In Southern California--At Least On New Year's Day

It's another beautiful, clear sunny day here in Los Angeles. This is something like the 55th time in 56 years, that Rose Parade and Rose Bowl are being held under dry weather conditions. That's quite a feat as very few cities can make such a statement about their New Year's Day weather. Indeed, Los Angeles can't make the same statement about any other day--e.g., December 31 or January 2, which have often seen rainy days. It's truly a happy coincidence that it is always dry and usually sunny on New Year's Day as the world tunes in to watch the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. Now as my dad used to say, it really isn't a coincidence. His theory was that good weather on New Year's Day is part of what he called a psychic structure--essentially everybody here believes there will be good weather for the parade and game, and presto, here it is. That sounded hokey to me, but on the other hand maybe there's something to that after seeing year after year of good weather go by.

An interesting sidebar arose five years ago when our 50 year streak of rainless New Year's was about to be broken. The local weather station, KNX, had contracted its weather forecasts out to the Weather Channel, whose meteoreologists would banter with the news anchors as if they were in studio, even though they were actually sitting in Atlanta, and at times were unfamiliar with things Los Angeles. So when the news anchor introduced the weatherman with the comment about rain coming on New Year's Day, the weatherman replied "I love it when it rains on New Year's.". Well since it hadn't rained on New Year's in Los Angeles since 1955, he clearly revealed himself to be a stranger to these parts, though the local anchor quickly said something like, "Well as you know it hasn't rained here on New Year's in decades." Actually I found comments like this from the out of town metereologists to be rather annoying and actually wrote the radio station to complain. Not too long after that they swtiched to using weather people from the local TV station instead.

So we're really enjoying today's wonderful weather--especially since it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

Central Park Wedding Photos -- The Show Must Go On

As mentioned here a few times in the past, Chinese immigrants from Fujian have developed a very interesting subculture in New York. New York is the center of the Fujian-American universe, as New York is the primary, if not sole entry point for this mostly undocumented group. Even if an immigrant finds a Chinese restaurant job somewhere else in the Midwest, East or South, they'll still return to Manhattan Chinatown, whether to look for a different job opportunity in another city, or just to hang out on their days off. A vast networks of buses transport Fujianese in the eastern half of the United States to and from New York without any need for identification.

Another reason why Fujianese immigrants travel to New York for is weddings. On Monday evenings, and to a lesser extent Tuesday nights, large Manhattan Chinatown restaurants, particularly in the Little Fuzhou area east of the Bowery, are packed with wedding banquets. Why Monday or Tuesday? Because this is the only day that most Fujianese restaurant workers get the day off. Early in the day, the bridal party travels to Central Park to take a gallery of elegant wedding photos to send to the relatives back home. Fujianese couples, usually not residents of New York, can be seen dressed up in their wedding finest, so common that this phenomenon has been well documented in the American press.

So what happens if the big day you planned happens to coincide with this weekend's blizzard, which as one wag stated, will result in no New Yorker ever dreaming of a White Christmas again? Well, you go ahead just as planned.

The Future Is Now

The 1982 film Blade Runner depicts Los Angeles in the year 2019, a city where it continually rains and all signage is in Japanese. Well, that day has sort of arrived. It has rained 6 consecutive days in Los Angeles, and I don't mean six consecutive days where it rained, but rather six days of continuous rain. Maybe we're spoiled in Los Angeles, but I don't remember a period like that since around 1963 when I was at Dorsey High School. As far as the Japanese signage part, that's not happening. But have you ever driven the seven mile stretch of Valley Blvd. in the San Gabriel Valley? It's pretty much like that in Chinese.

Fake Purses, Part 2 -- Overstating The Economic Effect

I'm probably as pro-business as anybody, but I become a little annoyed when you hear about a raid in which 10,000 fake purses were seized, costing the real manufacturer $5 million in sales, based on a value of $500 per purse. The fallacy in this analysis is that it presumes everybody who bought one of these fake purses would have paid $500 for a real one if the fake one wasn't on the market. A recent article about the low cost, $2.50 bus line between Manhattan Chinatown and Flushing Chinatown included a side comment that virtually every female passenger on this working class bus sported a fake Louis Vuitton handbag. Are you telling me that if they couldn't have bought one of these fake Louies on Canal Street for $35 that they'd spring the $500 for the real one?

One legitimate gripe the manufacturers could have would be the potential dilution of their product. If every middle aged woman in impoverished Manhattan Chinatown sports an LV lookalike bag, the cachet of the original has been dimmed to some extent. But based on the prices that real LV or Coach or Chanel or other designer bags bring, this dilution doesn't appear to be significant.

An iffier proposition is the effect of piracy on media items such as DVD movies. The lack of substitutability of originals and fakes doesn't hold nearly as true, as these days the copies are nearly the equivalent to the original. Yes, there are people like me who would never pay the retail price of a DVD, so if I on occasion buy a $3 DVD movie copy, this is not a sale that would have otherwise would have been made for full retail. But between the quality of the copies and the smaller price gap, this kind of piracy has a more tangible effect on the original product.

I must say that fake DVD marketing has its own fascinating elements. In New York Chinatown, like purveyors of fake purses, sellers of pirated DVDs may walk by you whispering "DVD DVD." They are very portable, able to bag their wares and disappear quickly if necessary. Strangely on a visit to the Chinese suburbs of Toronto just three years ago, high quality duplicate DVDs were being openly sold in the Chinese malls at multiple locations. However, in a return visit to the same stores a couple of months ago, while $3 to $5 DVDs were still being peddled, they were all Chinese language titles. Nevertheless, the surreptitious trade does manage to live on. While strolling in downtown Toronto's Chinatown, I saw a Chinese guy standing in front of a door holding a placard that said "DVDs-3 for $10", though he had no merchandise with him. So I asked the guy (in broken Chinese) whether he had any English language DVDs and he immediately opened the door and led me inside, and down a hallway which led to a small multi-tenant retail area, and ushered me into a video store. Like the stores in the mall, all the display items were Chinese. But I asked about English DVDs, and the gal said yes, and gave me a notebook with photocopied DVD jackets of American movies. I was struck by how this is just like the way they sell purses on Canal Street these days.