crafty circumlocutions

As part of the new fall associates starting in the office, we go to fancy welcome lunches. To greet my advisee, we went to lunch in an upscale international hotel downtown. Somehow when the appetizers came, instead of the Kobe beef "sliders" that I ordered, a butternut squash soup was placed in front of me. I pointed out to the waiter that this isn't what I ordered, but that the person next to me had ordered and didn't have his soup yet. He shuffled the soup to it's proper place and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen to see where my burgers were.

Five minutes later he comes out with a bowl of the soup of the day (not even the butternut squash - a cream of celery laced with white truffle oil), and offered up his apologies:

"The chef did prepare your sliders, but regretfully felt that they were not up to his standards and so has declined to serve them. He would like to offer you this soup - complimentary, of course."

Of course, the odds are very long that a seasoned chef (a) doesn't have the recipe for a Kobe beef burger down pat, and (b) even if so, wouldn't send it out to let the customer judge for himself the quality of the preparation. This just looks and smells like a snow job.

The soup was fine, but not great. What grated most here is that I wasn't given the opportunity to ask for anything else. The soup of the day - which I'm sure was selected for me because it involved two seconds of ladling and a quarter second of love from the truffle oil squeeze bottle - was what I wanted least of all off the menu. But because of both the ceremonious presentation of the soup and the fact that I certainly wasn't going to make the poor service the centerpiece of this lunch left me little room to graciously request something - anything - else from the menu.

It drove home for me that what I enjoy most of trying new restaurants isn't that the food is necessarily novel, or innovative, or trendy, or anything else. It's that the staff make a real effort to understand what you, as the customer, want done to make the experience satisfying. This restaurant didn't understand that. They must have assumed that if they gave me something, for free, that it would make everything right. In fact it was the opposite: the lunch was paid for already, I'd much rather have the choice of dishes even if it must be paid for. Or even an earnest explanation of what happened so that I can take the high ground, rather than having it foisted on me.

On the spectrum auction...

Came across this today:

While Internet access was part of the debate, questions about Europe's system were prominent in the spectrum talks. Europeans, with their wide-open system, enjoy better services because of greater competition, argued Columbia University law Prof. Tim Wu, who likened the U.S. wireless system to land lines in the 1950s, when customers had to lease their phones from AT&T.

Is this right? It sounds like a conflation of why mobile phone companies sell locked devices with why the U.S. has been a late adopter of mobile phone technology. The latter first:

My understanding of the situation was that European countries have better systems because the landline system under state monopolies was so atrocious there, that customers flocked to mobile systems as soon as they became available. By contrast, in the U.S., the breakup and regulation of services improved landline services enough that it took considerably longer for mobile phones to penetrate the market.

Not to mention that the U.S. has this problem with very low population density that makes it difficult to cost-effectively roll out new infrastructure for any kind of communication service. If mobile providers are spending billions pushing out mobile phone towers to cover small townships in the countryside, they can't very well direct that money to developing new services.

Now, the former, with a caveat: I'm a strong advocate for net neutrality, and having a mobile phone locked to a given provider is annoying, particularly when you want to travel internationally and buy and use minutes at the local rate instead of whatever your mobile phone company gouges from you.

But that just means I don't buy mobile phones that are locked. Any locked cell phone you can also buy unlocked, with no long-term contract requirement, from a thousand different online and offline stores. It costs more because it's not being subsidized by the mobile phone company. And I can use any GSM-enabled, unlocked phone on any other GSM network with no problem.

For a case-in-point, walk into any mobile phone store in Hong Kong, and jot down the prices on any phone you like. I'll wait.

Back? Okay, now look up the same phone with any U.S. carrier. Add the rebate they give you for signing up for a service plan back into that price. Compare. Every time I've done this, the prices are exactly the same.

If there's a problem, I don't think it's that the mobile phone companies sell locked phones. It's that U.S. consumers don't want to buy phones for their full retail price. There is already the choice to buy unlocked phones, and the additional choice to buy locked and subsidized phones. That looks like more choices, and the Free Marketeers love choices.

If the argument is that mobile service providers are locking their services so that you can't use even unlocked phones on them, that's a legitimate complaint. But I've never heard of a company doing such a thing. If the argument is that even paying full retail prices to a mobile phone company, you still get a locked phone, that's just a case of unsophisticated consumership. The options are out there, and they are really not hard to find.

One last point: is there really not enough competition in cell phone companies here? Assuming everything Wu says is right, there is still competition, only a less granular one: you can't change providers month-to-month, but you certainly can year-to-year. The fact that your phone is locked to a given provider is moot if 1) it was free and 2) after a year you can get another free phone from anyone you want. Right now I can go with T-Mobile, which has amazing customer service and well-priced packages, or with Verizon, which has amazing coverage, or with AT&T, which has the iPhone. Differentiated services despite the presence of locked devices.

Once it's outside, does it need to be "customers only"?

Sign outside a Vietnamese restaurant up at Kearny x Washington. It wouldn't be funny if not tied to a bright orange bucket with a grimy residue at the bottom that you don't quite want to identify.

Do you know how your Keyguard works?

The firm got whiff of a tasty opportunity, so an all-attorney email was sent out to see if we could capitalize on it:

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxx, xxxxx
To: DC - All Attys; NY - All Attys.; FW - All Attys.
Sent: Mon Mar 12 11:44:48 2007
Subject: "World Bank lawyer" wanted for "Prize Capital Initiative" legal work--corporate

A client is interested in hiring a lawyer to represent his interests in setting up a fund and emerging company generator using World Bank and matching funds for technological innovations that will generate global health and environmental benefits and will spin off companies on the IP developed. Others involved are Paul Allen, Sergei Brin and Richard Branson. So it’s a potentially interesting engagement.

Please advise if we can identify such a World Bank person or identify a volunteer for that position please advise.

xxxxxx xxxxxx

Not 3 minutes later, an email from one of my distinguished junior colleagues:

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx, xxxx
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 10:11 AM
To: DC - All Attys; NY - All Attys.; FW - All Attys.
Subject: Re: "World Bank lawyer" wanted for "Prize Capital Initiative" legal work--corporate

LlllLlllllLllllLllllllLlLllllllllllllllLLlLLllllllllPlLlPlPlLlLlllLlPOPppoPPooooOOoooooooOOooooooOOOoPOOoiOOOOoOOOOOOooO

xxxx xxxxx

-------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device

I have no commentary on this. I just pop open the email (and the Recall request that came 10 minutes later) whenever I need a good laugh.

Discount Camera is neither discount nor a camera - discuss.

I stupidly forgot to order a UV filter for the 55mm f/1.4 Nikon lens I got yesterday, so I set out to some of the camera stores in the neighborhood to see if I could find one that would do the job. Discount Camera is 2 blocks from here, so even though the Yelp reviews are almost universally - and usefully - negative, I check it out anyway. It's a filter, not a lens or a memory card or a camera, how bad could it be?

I walk in, say I need a 52mm filter, and a half-second later I'm looking at a bill of sale. Umm, how much is it? "$19.99, I can get you into a high-end brand for $5 more." I squint at the packaging. I'm no photography expert, but filters I saw online started at about $9. And those were Tiffen or Hoya, not Sunpak. Why the price discrepancy? "These are glass. No cheap plastic ones here. We only sell high-quality." What about this $9 Tiffen one I see advertised everywhere? "Tiffen makes some glass filters, some plastic filters." Nice dodge. Introduce uncertainty into what it was I got the price quote on, exactly, without actually lying about anything. I have to think about it a little more... and like the Yelp reviewers say, the guy literally snatches the thing out of my hand, and makes a big show of ripping up the bill of sale and tossing it away.

I guess he already knew I won't come back after I do my homework.

Needless to say, on Amazon, the $19.99 and $24.99 filters comes in at $9.99 at Adorama, the Hoya $11.99. Over 100% markup. Like the Yelp reviewers, I'm happy to support local business. I pay a premium to do it, and in SF a premium is a premium. But the choice isn't between buying cheap online or buying expensive from rude jerks - that isn't a choice at all. It's between buying cheap online or buying expensive from people that are genuinely passionate about what they do and provide quality goods, or at least will be honest when you're sacrificing quality for cost.

The Killers 4/7/2007 at Bill Graham Civic

They didn't last long, but tickets were re-released through LiveNation yesterday, and I managed to pick up 2 after I sat on my hands for the first release.

Now I actually have to listen to the rest of the album, and stop listening to the singles so I won't be sick of them by the time the concert comes around.

seven word movie review: 300

Cheesiest possible dialogue, but severed limbs abound.

My first Nikon lens

I'm a total punter at photography, but I picked up a D50 digital SLR for my bar trip to Asia last summer and haven't regretted it since. It's easy, it's fun, and the pictures come out looking amazing with very little effort.

So begins the slippery slope. I started out with a 18mm- 00mm Sigma f/3.5-5.6, which worked great for the trip but suffers in low light. The day I was at 西湖 in 杭州 it was terribly overcast and most of the pictures came out dim. Well I'm waiting to be able to afford some kind of f/2.8 superzoom, I decided to try and find something that'll get great pictures in low-light. And a bonus if it's an actual Nikon lens.

Enter my first real Nikon lens, a Nikon 55mm f/1.4D prime. After hunting around on Ebay for a few weeks, and seeing used lenses going for reputable sellers around $260 + shipping, I opted to spring the $20 extra it cost on Amazon (at the time - it since went up to $329) for a brand-spanking new one. I can't wait to get this thing out and see what it can do.