Fishing and being seasick

Today being my birthday, I was inundated with greetings (both on the Wall and personal messages via e-mail) on Facebook. (Thanks to the calendar reminder on Facebook, even your 2nd grade classmate remembered to greet me on my birthday.) The common (courteous) question I was asked apart from the greeting, "what kind of fun stuff did you do today?" And I tell the entire story.

This was a trip that had long been planned by my Sales Director, won from a fund raising auction at World Relief back in spring of this year. Due to schedule conflicts and marine forecast, the fishing trip had to be re scheduled a couple of times. Then the day finally came. We are going fishing at 7 am from Winthrop Harbor North Point Marina, on a Saturday. Woke up at 4 am, got out at past 5 am and made the trek from Warrenville to Winthrop Harbor, Illinois. While waiting for someone else, my Sales Director asked me, "so, Bobby, do you ever have problems with sea sickness?" "Bill, I grew up in the Philippines, of course not!" I have been paddling on canoes on mild rivers, rode in canoes with outriggers in Mindanao Sea, have taken a passenger (overnight) cruise ship from Manila back to Butuan, a ferry from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel--of course I have never had problems with sea sickness. (I did remember Captain mention that the waves farther out would be far better than the waves' height further inland.) So I thought I hope we catch Salmon and Trout today, lots and lots of them.

One and half hour after venturing out, and having half eaten a bagel with lox and cream cheese, I started feeling sick. Not wanting to ruin the trip for everyone, I did my best not to lose my breakfast. And the three and a half foot waves felt like ten foot (or more waves, like the Perfect Storm, or it felt like it for me), and this went on for four hours. When the captain finally saw me puking three times, he said "let's head back in" and started to pull the poles. A ruined trip and no Salmon caught. Disappointing, and I felt bad for both Bill and Paul. And the captain has to clean the sides of his boat.

Not sure if it was over confidence or oversight on my part about the risks involved with this trip, the Dramamine might have help prevent nausea and motion sickness. I took two tablets after attempting to reel in the line (thinking we had caught something about two hours into the trip). Pretty obvious it was too late. Lesson learned: what possible risks could come up with a trip or a project. Identify it, take steps to mitigate it, or plain avoid it. With the marine forecast of 3.5 and less than 5 foot waves, it was safe to venture out and go fishing. But it is not for the faint of stomach.

shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at Jenny's Fruit Stand

My wife and I spent last weekend or Labor Day weekend in Sawyer Michigan. Although I have lived here in the states for almost 20 years now, I cannot help but notice the differences between how "production" (collective term) works between here and the Philippines. (I wanted to post photos of my wife shopping at the fruit stand but I lost those digital photos. That is a whole different story.)

This fruit stand was not manned, sat in a corner of a street, in a private property. It had a wooden cash box (i.e., cash and check payment only), chained to the structure. It had three security cameras (more than likely with motion detector), one of which had a short antenna (I can only imagine it works off 802.11 protocol). I noticed that the power adaptors were plugged to an outlet and did not seem secure (someone can just unplug them, if someone really intended to abscond the fruits, vegetables, organic honey, and the cash box). On a white board, the following works were scribed: "Smile, you are on candid camera. Thou shall not steal."

Where is this all leading to? What I can conclude are the following. Any production business process that can be automated or outsourced, whereby there is significant cost savings to labor cost--such solution needs to be examined and implemented. A lot of our economic "transaction" is based on honesty. (A fudged resume can be discovered. A dishonest time sheet will be caught. A dishonest tax return will be audited. A substandard part replacement discovered. This is very true in the US. Sadly, I cannot speak the same about the Philippines. It may be different now.) Thus, such automation and BPO (business process outsourcing) ought not to be ruled out when trying to cut production cost. Then again, this might be stating what is now too obvious.

US/Boeing versus Airbus/European Union

There is not much news happening (not earth shaking at least) that I wanted to blog on but the following article prior to the long Labor Day weekend caught my eye. (Well, the forest fires in Los Angeles is being contained, and it is being investigated both as an arson and as a homicide in light of two firefighters' death.) Ever since Boeing moved their corporate office to Chicago, news related to Boeing hits the Chicago Trib and becomes easier to follow. In light of the economic meltdown, large drop in corporate travel (airlines reportedly losing billions in 1st half of 09), the competition on new plane orders becomes more heated between Airbus and Boeing (along with Canadian, Brazilian, Chinese and Russian plane manufacturers intent on breaking up the monopoly by the Big 2).

The following is the recent development on this on-going battle. Excerpted from the Chicago Tribune article today:

"The United States and Chicago-based Boeing Co. scored the first victory in a lengthy trade conflict Friday when the World Trade Organization found that the European Union had provided illegal aircraft subsidies to Airbus SAS.

But the extent of their win, like much else in this clash, was disputed. The only certainty is that the 5-year-old imbroglio, already one of the longest and costliest on record, is far from over, trade experts cautioned."

I had taken the Micro Economics class at VA TECH years ago, and I still do remember the following "ideal." Government subsidies are bad, since it interferes with free market forces. It does not level the playing field for all players. It tips the playing field in favor of another. I will not debate the merits of the European Union's subsidies, which part is legal or not (70 % has been ruled by the World Trade Organization as not illegal).

What I have come to the conclusion are the following. I find it interesting that the US is taking this issue with Airbus at WTO, siding with Boeing. This makes me ask the following questions, what about the farm subsidies to US farmers? What about TARP? What about the billions in Stimulus money to state and local governments? Is this tinkering with market economics? Where is the consistency in government policy related to government subsidies, primarily to US farmers. One may argue these are very different times, and call for very different solutions to different problems. Is the US government right in taking Boeing's case to WTO? In this case, I think so.