Planned Obsolescence.

People older than me can usually be heard lamenting “they don’t make things like they used to,” and unlike most old person ramblings, this one is actually true. Tools, appliances, gizmos, gadgets, and widgets aren’t make like they used to be made. Back before I was born, when things were made by people paid more than thirty cents an hour, some attention to quality was given. From what I understand, there was a time when products that were made well, and lasted a long time, built brand loyalty. If you bought a clothes iron from Sears, and it worked well, you might go out and buy a washer or dryer from Sears too.

Today, quality doesn’t exist. There’s an expectation that the toaster or refrigerator or keychain flashlight will eventually stop working. At the same time, the cost of these goods has probably dropped considerably as their quality went downhill over time. Especially in the case of small appliances, the cost of new goods is often lower than the cost to repair the broken ones. When was the last time anyone had a toaster repaired? You can’t even get a vacuum cleaner from Wal-mart repaired if you wanted to.

This is planned obsolescence. Manufacturers make shoddy products and sell them on the cheap, knowing that when their product breaks we’ll just go get a new one. It’s a sad state of affairs, especially when the broken goods are usually just headed for the landfill.

This past week two household items of ours have broken: a blender (retail value: $200) and an electric shaver (retail value: $175). The high price of these items, supposedly a reflection of their quality, means that we’ll be having them repaired instead of replaced. Cost to repair the blender is yet unknown but the shaver will run about $80 to fix. Steep, but still less than the cost of a new one.

It’s another one of the mysteries of consumer culture that we accept and expect planned obsolescence. I mean, it makes sense for the manufacturer: keep the customers buying your shitty products, which in turn also helps the retail outlet. But for the consumer - the one that used to have the power in this tangled web - items that are destined to stop working are the opposite of what we should expect. Why are we okay with being swindled?

More random thoughts, in note form.

- My sickness has moved from my sinuses into my chest, as it always does. So while I can sleep at night, during the day I have coughing that gives me headaches. To the family members who suggest echinacea, I will never accept your witchcraft placebo pills!

- I’m so glad I didn’t watch the Oscars this year. The only movie up for an award that I’d seen was Michael Clayton, and while it stars my boyfriend George Clooney, it wasn’t really as riveting or topical as some of his past politically-charged movies. And as much as I love Ellen Page, I hope she isn’t featured on any TV shows for the next year. Overall it seems like even the celebrities have stopped caring about the Oscars.

- With new episodes of the two shows I watch not returning until April or September, I started watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on the advice of my friend Erwin. Erwin’s a bigger Terminator buff than I am, but within two episodes I was hooked. This show is everything Bionic Woman tried to be, but ended up as an Epic Fail: an engaging storyline, less cheesy dialogue, and a sense of foreboding. Of course, after spending my sick days catching up on missed episodes, it turns out the show ends its trial run of 7 episodes next week. Argh!

- I just saw an ad on TV for a drug called Aciphex. That’s pronounced Ass-eff-ex. For a gastrointestinal drug, is that really the best they could come up with?

- We went to Stanley Park on Saturday and ended up gazing at the “skyline” of downtown Vancouver. It’s a wall of glassy highrise condos, and it’s ugly as hell. Everything’s built in this safe, uninspired, colourless and featureless modern style. Even the new white elephant convention center is this bland, half-assed wavy roof design that tries to straddle the line between unique and safe and comes off looking stupid. Large scale modern BC architecture is depressing. Where are the buildings that, despite what you may think of it, at least took chances? The SFU campus, Canada Place, Science World, the Telus “boot”, the CBC building… now it’s all just cookie cutter towers. In 30 years it will be an eyesore to more than just me, I promise.

This post brought to you by mucous.

I’m currently sick with my yearly common cold. Two days of sore throat and lymph nodes the size of tree trunks have given way to a headful of boogers. By the weekend I predict that will have passed and I’ll be left with a nagging cough for the next four weeks. Also, if the last two years are any indication, the cough will leave me with bruised ribs. What a joyous time.

Yesterday the provincial government announced a budget with a new gas tax, under the label of being “green”. At the same time they’re buying votes helping the working class with a $100 cheque per person. They’re also claiming personal income tax will be reduced, which is not really an exciting or meaningful thing to me. Anyway, I’m of mixed feelings on another gas tax that is supposed to increase every year for the next four years. On one hand, making gas and oil consumption more expensive might make people think twice about buying a Hummer. On the other hand, the tax money is just going to the government’s general revenues and is not specifically earmarked to improve the environment. Essentially they’re hoping that, by making fuel more expensive, people will buy less of it. In reality, the price of fuel has almost doubled in the last 10 years and it hasn’t affected anyone’s fuel-burning habits. The whole thing is kind of hollow, as it doesn’t have any real effect in creating something constructively positive for the environment. So to call it a green initiative isn’t truthful. And the hundred bucks per person? Well, the NDP did it under Ujjal Dosangh, and the Liberals were up in arms about it being a vote-buying scheme. Ah, hypocrisy. Guess it’s easy to forget that argument when there’s not a chance in hell they’ll lose the next election.

Now a word from Andy Rooney.

As promised, here’s a roundup of thoughts and observations on traveling to Mexico that I may not have included in the previous week’s posts.

Flying in an Airplane
It’s almost a suspension of disbelief that a few hundred people can climb into a steel canister and be launched higher than the clouds, and half a day later arrive in a different country. Plus, to think that this development really only “took off” (sorry) about sixty years ago and you have to think just how unlikely the whole commercial airline thing is. It’s fun, and almost magical.

Cars outside of Canada and the USA
I regularly read about small cars in Europe, and one of the first things I noticed during the bus ride to our resort is that Mexico seems to have embraced small cars as well. It really “drives home” (sorry) how North America has this ingrained obsession with large vehicles. With gas as expensive as it is — and really, we’ve got nothing to complain about when gasoline costs way more just about everywhere else — it just makes sense to have a 1.4 litre, two door hatchback for driving around. It was even more evident when, on my first day back at work downtown, I see the constant stream of SUVs, pickup trucks, and six cylinder luxury cars with one person per car stuck in traffic. Sure, I have a fondness for hatchbacks, but I even saw some cars that are way more stylish than some sold here.

The Law of Averages
For every hot young woman in a bikini, there’s one old man in a speedo and one leatherfaced tan-beast woman smoking cigarettes. I’m not complaining, as there was plenty of things for me to ogle. It’s just the way things are, I suppose. Someday I’ll be the old man in a speedo — mark my words.

Booze should not be expensive here
It’s kind of astounding how much we pay for alcohol in BC. I imagine it’s got all sorts of taxes included in the price, just as with our gasoline, but when there’s deals like a litre of Kahlua for $13 or three one-litre bottles of rum for $22, it makes me green with envy. I didn’t really look, but I’m sure smokes are equally as cheap, but I don’t care about that. Hell, smokes can cost three hundred dollars a pack for all I care. But I want my cheap booze dammit!

Tanning is hard
It’s probably due to a life of sitting in a dark room, in front of a computer or a video game system, but it seems I’m not capable of getting an adequate tan. I burned on the first day and a little on the last day, but overall I think I might have reduced my pasty-white colour only marginally.

We have it pretty good
As part of the middle white class, I can’t say I’ve ever lived in poverty. With the exception of a very small part of our population, even the lower middle class lives better than what’s probably the majority in Mexico. We don’t need rainwater basins on the top of our crumbling, dirt-floor homes. We have reliable electricity. The clothes we outgrow or get tired of end up being sold back to us. And for a lot of Canadians, not owning a car is a huge inconvenience. Relative to the countries that make the crap we buy, our problems really need to be put in perspective. I’m not saying our problems aren’t important. They’re just not always as bad as we might think.

Don’t be an asshole outside of your own country
If you’re going to be an arrogant jerk in Canada, hey, whatever. That’s your choice, and we all know you’re just another asshole. Around here they’re a dime a dozen. But when going to another country, where the people who run the shops you’re in make less in one month than you do in a week, tone down on the assholery. Case in point, some guy tried to haggle over the price of some touristy crap in a gift shop near our resort. When the young man selling things wouldn’t budge on the price, the guy had the audacity to complain that the exchange rate didn’t favour Canadian dollars. If he’d had his way, he would have saved maybe a dollar Canadian, and he wouldn’t stop complaining that he felt he was paying too much. I know we’re all told to haggle when in Mexico, but to whine about saving a dollar at most is insulting and shameful.

Honeymoon in Review: Part Three

Day Five
Our final excursion of the trip was my ladyfriend’s idea: horseback riding. The horsey ride recommended to us was a journey to a cenote (pronounced seh-noh-tay), which is a cave filled with water. It wasn’t one of the more popular excursions, not because of anything negative, but because it’s not an overpriced theme park with an advertising budget and pamphlets. A three-row van picked us up along with two other couples - one young Canadian couple, one old Spanish couple - and we were introduced to our horses. We’d been warned about Mexican horses: they’re small. If you look at the photos of our trip, you’ll see it appears I’m riding a pony. They weren’t that small, but you could probably fit two of ‘em inside a Clydesdale. Picture that for a moment, in your mind’s eye. Okay, let’s continue.

My horse was named Pancho, and my ladyfriend’s horse was Camille. Pancho was a worthy steed, full of energy and crafty enough to eat leaves while he walked. The young man in front of me had a horse that would be considered a stumblebum. About 45 minutes into the jungle, on a rocky path, and we arrived at the cenote. Here our guide, Miguel, showed us the chicle tree. It is what you might guess, a tree from which the sap was once used in chewing gum like Chiclets. A small bag of mini-churros and a can of pop later and we were introduced to the cenote.

Some cenotes are rainwater, some are rivers. Ours was the latter, part of what’s estimated to be a 160km underground river, one of the longest in the world. Crystal was the first to step foot in the dark water, when the tour guide turned on some lights they’d strung through the length of the cave. This exposed a large pool of crystal-clear water surrounded by stalactites, with nooks and crannies too small for people to swim past. At the far end was a smaller hole reaching to the surface, through which plant roots draped down like strands of cooked spaghetti. Like everything else we’d seen on our trips outside the resort, it was beautiful. We spent about an hour there before getting back on our mules and returning to the corral (”corral” in this case consisting of a bunch of trees, not a fenced-in area).

We (the young couples) really had to wonder why the older Spanish folks went on this excursion. The man chain smoked in almost comical amounts - on the horse, in the cenote, and was upset he couldn’t light up in the van. Top it off with him nearly choking from an inability to breathe while swimming, and a wife who spent her time fighting with him, and it made us all think what the hell was wrong with them. Well, what can you do. We had fun, so screw ‘em.

This night was our second a la carte meal, and unfortunately it was the worst one. The menu was supposedly Mexican, but really all they’d done was take the buffet food and add some different sauce or seasoning and passed it off as “gourmet”. Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all.

Day Six
The final actual day of vacationing, and we made the decision to spend it on the beach. After a couple hours of lazing around in the shade, and downing a few pina coladas, we headed up the shoreline past our resort’s boundaries. Here we found some lovely bungalows with patios and hammocks right on the beach - closer to the water than any of our resort’s villas. Something to investigate for when we return and decide not to do the all-inclusive stay. A little further and we found a limestone outcropping, the tip of which featured a thatched hut with … nothing else. It looked like something existed there at some point, but we figured it must have been destroyed in hurricanes a few years earlier. Not far from that we saw a half-finished resort-ish building. At first glance it looked under construction, but considering the surroundings were overgrown with plants and the “beach” was actually “sharp limestone”, I have to guess that it was abandoned.

After that it was back to the resort for some ice cream, more pina coladas, and our final “fancy” dinner. Thankfully the quality was far above the previous one: the menu was much more sophisticated (but still not Mexican) and one of the servers prepared special coffees using fire. It’s a good way to impress your clientele by setting fire to alcohol and splashing it around. Anyway, the meals were rack of lamb for myself and rabbit stew for my wife. Both were very delicious, and the rabbit came with a warning to Crystal of “are you sure you want rabbit? You know it’s Bugs Bunny?” I suppose some girls get squeamish eating something kept as a pet. Not my girl!

With the night complete it was time to pack our bags for tomorrow’s departure.

Day Seven
Time to leave. Amid some great confusion with bags and check-out slips, we got on the bus at 9am and it took us through part of the city of Playa Del Carmen. The area we drove through would probably be considered “slums”, if you took away the junkies, needles, mould, and poop in the alleys. I’ll comment more on this tomorrow.

Finally, a two-hour wait in the Cancun airport, included a stop at the Duty-Free store. It’s ridiculous how cheap booze is when it’s not regulated by governments and taxed all to hell. I picked up a litre of Kahula and my lady picked up a litre of rum. Total price? $25. Canadian. Seriously, why do we accept such high booze prices in this country? Sigh.

The flight home was a mixed bag. We got two seats (one window seat) to ourselves, but were seated even closer to screaming babies. Thankfully it was daytime during our flight, unlike the one a week previous, which meant a clear view of cities and mountains. The largest city we flew over was Dallas, Texas, which is enormous. It’s also interesting - and kind of sickening - to see suburbs from overhead.

We touched down around 6pm, and an hour of lines and customs later, we’re met by my mother-in-law who takes us home for some sleep before returning to work the next day.

And that’s our trip! I’ll wrap it all up soon with opinions and deep thinking on all manner of things.

Honeymoon in Review: Part Two

Day Four
It was our first excursion day, and we got up early to pile onto a bus to Xel-Ha (pronounced Shell-ha, in case you’re wondering). Xel-Ha is a ecological park where the focus is on water, and namely snorkeling. Of course, it’s entirely tourist-friendly, and our admittance to the park included free drinks and food (just like the resort). We picked up our snorkels, masks, and fins and headed straight for the water. Just below the surface were countless schools of tropical fish, the likes of which had only existed to me in aquarium tanks. Here we were, swimming with zebra and clown and parrot fish, in vivid purples and yellows and the occasional pearlescent rainbow of colours, not to mention stingrays, a sea turtle (seen from land, unfortunately not from snorkel mask), snappers, and more. I honestly have no idea how many varieties of fish lay in the inlet’s waters, but nevertheless the experience was incredible.

Xel-Ha also had cliffs to jump off, inner tubes to float on, girls in bikinis to ogle, and - a pleasant surprise - the closest we got to authentic Mexican food on our trip. There, we took a roll of film using a disposable underwater camera, which will appear on Flickr soon enough. Out of the water, we took a walk around the entire park, through jungle and past some quasi-cenotes. We both ended up rather sunburned, but it was completely worth it. A quick bus ride home as the sun set, and a late afternoon siesta before eating the first of our three allotted a la carte dinners.

Day Five
Excursion number two: a quick trip to Tulum, a small site of Mayan ruins located on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Tulum is one of the less-preserved sites, especially when compared to Chichen Itza, with a lot of crumbling temples and rock walls now populated with iguanas. Tourists aren’t allowed to climb on any of the ruins, unlike another nearby site at Coba, as the structures are probably far from safe. Altogether it took us only about 40 minutes to comb through the site, without stopping to read many of the informational signs. However, one of the parts of Tulum I wanted to find was the beach, after reading about it in a travel guide our friend Beth gave us. I expected something similar to the beach at the resort: sandy with some exposed coral or limestone a couple feet off shore.

Boy was I wrong.

The beach at Tulum, located at the bottom of the cliff where the ruins lay, was a stretch of the most pristine white sand imaginable. The sand extended probably 200 or 300 meters into the ocean, still at a depth one could stand with their head above the waves. The colour of the water is exactly what you see in photos or postcards; the impossibly sapphire blue that, until you see it, you’d swear it couldn’t be real. As we had a taxi waiting, we couldn’t stay long, although I probably could have just floated/swam in the water all day. If we ever go back to the Riveria, an entire day shall be spent on the beach at Tulum.

On the way back to the taxi we ended up lost in a maze of touristy junk shops, the type that sell the stereotypical Mayan or Aztec calendars, hammocks, and keychains that the shop owners are very eager to get you to buy. We’d agreed beforehand not to buy any souvenirs, which probably frustrated the people trying to get us to haggle. I have to say, though, the one handicraft I didn’t see much of, but which I really like, are the calaveras that are based on the dia de los muertos celebrations. I think it’s great that a culture celebrates the dead, and the handpainted skeletons are extremely cool. I guess they weren’t in great supply in the tourist shops because us Westerners don’t like to think about death as something colourful or celebratory. Again, next time we go, I’ll have to find some.

Tomorrow, a summary of our last three days, and after that a rundown of random thoughts and observations on our vacation.