We were in DC last weekend for our big girl’s birthday. Coming back, we knew we’d hit traffic because the NYC marathon was Sunday. We would normally take the Verrazano bridge (Staten Island to Brooklyn) on the way home, but that’s where the marathon starts so there’s a ton of road closures. When we left, the estimated time was 4 hours 30 minutes, which isn’t terrible, just going a bit further up the Jersey Turnpike, Holland Tunnel to Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge home. As I’m driving, maybe 5 minutes before what would be our usual exit to the Verrazano, Google Maps does the “faster route available” thing. I wish I could have taken a screenshot:
Faster route available 41 minutes faster Accept?
41 minutes? I couldn’t hit accept fast enough. Our timing was apparently perfect, they had just opened the Verrazano. All the roads before and after, that are usually slow with traffic, were basically empty. It was like driving at 4 am.
Well, I didn’t see Apple’s longcultivated ‘Services’ narrative going in this direction. Earlier today, it was announced that Lionel Messi, the world’s greatest soccer player,¹ would be leaving Europe behind and joining Inter Miami.² This matters because the biggest name in fútbol (soccer), and arguably in all sports, is coming to America.³ But it also matters because he’s coming to play in the MLS. A league that has an exclusive television deal with Apple. And as such, Apple apparently helped lure Messi over with an extraordinary offer: a cut of revenue from new subscribers to their Season Pass service.
That’s right. Apple is using the world’s highest-profile athlete as lead gen.
We were in Thailand for two weeks and we visited two different elephant sanctuaries. Elephants are native to Thailand and have been domesticated there for hundreds of years. Many of these elephants are treated poorly, especially as they get older. So these sanctuaries try to acquire these elephants to treat them humanely and they offer tours to cover expenses.
The two sanctuaries we visited were quite different. The first was outside of Chiang Mai. It was an hour drive into the country. For the tour, we put on a special outfit (we were told the elephants had been trained to expect food from people dressed in red) with boots and a bamboo hat. That would have been fine, but it was crazy hot. Important side note, it’s better to visit Thailand in December/January than in May, but we were there for a wedding, so we didn’t choose the date.
So we meet the elephants and feed them a ton of bananas:
Then the elephants need to go for a walk and eat more real food. So we walk with them while their handlers are chopping up banana trees for them to eat.
This is interesting to watch, but did I mention how hot it was? We are pretty much puddles of sweat at this point. My wife and daughter are ready to bail, but the elephants have their routine and we have to follow it. After they eat they walk to a pool to cool off and get muddy.
And then they walk to a separate pool where we go in with them to wash them off. As hot as we were, that was much appreciated.
The second elephant sanctuary was in Phuket. It had the same mission but a very different tour. In the first tour, we followed the elephant’s routine. This tour was geared towards the tourists. If it hadn’t been so damn hot I might have preferred the more natural approach of the first tour, but in the heat the second was much better. There were similarities, we started out feeding the elephants bananas (no silly outfit).
Then, just a short distance away, we gave them a mud bath.
Then, also a short distance away, we go in a small pool and splash them with water to get the mud off.
And finally, under a totally artificial shower structure, we brushed them clean. All of this happened in an area about the size of a baseball diamond, so it wasn’t exactly hard for the tourists. And Phuket was about ten degrees cooler than Chiang Mai, so hot, but not brutally so.
So while the first tour was much more natural, there’s something to be said for not collapsing of heat exhaustion. And the second tour was much quicker, getting us back to the beach…
We just got back from a two-week trip to Thailand including a friend’s wedding. I’ll have more Thailand posts soon, but the trip itself is fresh in my mind. My wife likes to travel, but hates to fly, so with such long flights we decided to splurge and go first class.
Going to Bangkok we took Emirates. Emirates first class is crazy expensive, but the experience is over the top, ridiculously amazing. At JFK airport, you start at the Emirates lounge with nice food and drinks, and you board the plane not from a gate, but directly from the lounge.
The first class seat isn’t a seat at all, it’s a “suite”. You have a door you can close. The screen for movies is huge, of course the seat flattens to a bed and the goodies are plentiful. Champagne greets you and they even bring you pajamas for the flight.
The food is delicious, and you can have it whenever you want. There is even a shower available at the end of the flight. You only get 5 minutes of water, but I had to try it. When we arrived in Dubai for our layover, an Emirates representative met us to drive us in a golf cart to the next gate (well, the next lounge). Then we repeat the process for the flight to Bangkok. I don’t know if we’ll ever do that again, but wow, it was a treat.
Within Thailand we flew two short flights. For these, regional airlines have frequent inexpensive flights, so we flew VietJet. No fancy first class here, but the flights were 1 and 2 hours, so no biggie. And for a few dollars more, VietJet offered something called SkyBoss. It looked like it got you to the front of the plane and included checked baggage. We had a lot of luggage, so we did it.
It turns out that SkyBoss has two other important perks that I wasn’t aware of. The first was a short (non-existent really) check-in line. That was nice. But the second perk was the best. If you have SkyBoss, your luggage comes out absolutely first. Seeing your four bags come out right away and leaving before everyone else was so nice.
When we got home to JFK yesterday, waiting for our bags to arrive on the carousel, we really missed SkyBoss.
Because I follow a lot of the old school bloggers and because after all these years, they all seem to follow each other, I ended up with an RSS feed for the Lefsetz Letter. Bob Lefsetz has been a music industry analyst for ages and while I don’t follow the blog super closely, I do find it interesting.
This week he did a post about his 70th birthday. Being a big number, his wife got a bunch of folks to record birthday wishes on video and she combined it. There are many more famous people (starts with Donny Osmond) than I would get for my 70th birthday. Paul Anka sings new lyrics to “My Way” (which Paul Anka wrote). There are many older artists that had me going, “wait, who is that”, but it’s an impressive list regardless. The whole thing is 30 minutes long, so skim through it, but it’s fun. The person in the YouTube preview still is Seth Godin, who I follow and often link to.
I would be super happy with something anywhere close to that on any birthday. Btw, there’s a Marvel like post credits scene with Elton John…
Nestor Cortes has become my favorite Yankee. First of all, he’s one of those athletes who is obviously having fun, which is fun to watch. It is a game after all. Crazy windups, bubble gum showers and, oh yeah, he can pitch.
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