Monday, February 06, 2023
zen interior design style
Saturday, February 04, 2023
Camino plans: Porto to Santiago
I've been talking a lot about the Camino. Finally I decided to do it.
I bought plane tickets to walk the Camino Portuguese this May. Hopefully there will be wildflowers. I'll be walking 173 miles from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Aff will walk the final 63 miles with me.
I hope it will be meditative, with trees and ocean and port wine and audiobooks.
Monday, January 23, 2023
white-glove manipulation
During the pandemic, I read "Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels". The author went undercover and worked at two luxury hotels for a year, to assess how workers felt about customers spending $500 or $800 per night on a room. This book is from the mid 90s, so it would be equivalent to something like $1000 per night nowadays.
The workers were earning around $20 per hour. They used mental techniques to deal with witnessing the wealth differential up-close every day. Some workers looked down on the customers for being uncouth or being unable to endure any hardship due to lifelong pampering. They passive aggressively left rude customers on hold for 15 minutes, and then apologized profusely when taking them off hold. This made the customers frustrated and helpless. Other workers identified with the wealthiest customers and saw them as buddies.
The customers wanted approval from the workers. These 5-star hotels cultivated an extremely complex and undocumented set of etiquette, to create insecurity in their rich customers. If you don't tip your bellhop, you're a jerk. If you try to tip the receptionist, you're also a jerk. If you tip too little, you're a jerk. How much is the right amount to tip? That depends on many variables and is not posted anywhere, but if you get it wrong, you're a jerk.
The customers end up in a state of insecurity, hoping they don't breach etiquette. They probably also sense that some workers may look down on them secretly. The hotels serve as a finishing school for the rich, teaching them the arbitrary rules. Customers sent flowers to the workers, brought them gifts, and remembered their names. The workers served as judges of who is exuding upper-class behavior and who is an impostor.
I like reading about manipulative systems, to give myself some defenses against manipulative tactics.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Earning dough vs unlimited breadsticks
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
History of Sugar
I listened to an audiobook "The History of Sugar". I had no idea that sugar plantations were even crueler than cotton and tobacco plantations. The average life span of a slave on a sugar plantation was 10 years. It was so hard on the women's bodies that it made them infertile.
Sugar led to the creation of sugar bowls, for rich Europeans to show off. They whitewashed the ways in which the sugar was produced.
This audiobook actually led me to have less desire to eat sugary foods.
Also, these old-timey sugar advertisements are evil.