Expensive Suckers

Singapore seems caught up in the global vacuum cleaner conspiracy. Local evidence was found during an aimless wander around a hardware store in Vivocity, the shopping mall down at the harbour front. Such stores are pretty rubbish by my standards; all bubble packs and finished goods with few raw materials. Anyway, they had a vacuum cleaner on display, nothing super fancy, a drag along the floor model on casters with a hose. The ad copy went "Why spend twice as much?" Sticker price: S$1,760 (£660).

I've seen this design before with a glass bowl holding water that has some beneficial filtering properties. The paper has a gwai loh writing a regular column (not as good as this blog, I assume you) and a recent article related his inability to resist door to door sales people and how his wife hastily intervened before he bought a $3,000 vacuum cleaner, a snip at $50 a month on the drip feed.

I had woman peddling Hoovers at my door. She didn't have it with her, I imagine it was downstairs until she got a prospect, so I don't know what it was like but for investigative purposes I'm sorry I didn't pursue it.

I've heard similar tales in England. My ex boss' son (nice but a tad on the delinquent side), sold a deluxe £800 model for a while. It claimed a cast iron case with heavy duty motor and a special nozzle; you set it in the corner of a room with the nozzle blowing air down one wall. After a while, it sets up a circulating air current which cleans the dust out of the room's air.

Reality check: a vacuum cleaner consists of an electric motor driving a fan, a (plastic) casing, hose and optionally, a filter. At the factory gates in China, we are looking at less than £10. For me, Dysons are pushing it; every one I've ever used clogged then broke. A sales lady in John Lewis once confided that most Dysons were bought by men (flashy, macho design you see). Personally, I have some hope invested in those robot ones that scuttle around all day annoying cats. They're a bit fragile and underpowered at the moment but seem ideal for hard wood flooring.

So there's established precedent for aspirational vacuum cleaner sales though I wonder about the psychological sub-text: "My house is dirty, ergo I am unworthy. Spend a lot of money in penance and I can be rid of my sin." You'd be better off donating money towards genetic research into reducing human skin cell production but I suppose if you insist on spending £1,000 on a vacuum cleaner, it might as well be for spiritual reasons.

Cheap or cheap?

My dictionary lists 11 major meanings of the word "cheap", though not it's middle English sense of "a market", from whence street names like "Cheapside" are derived. The primary meanings are "low cost" and "shoddy", the potential confusion between the 2 causing airlines to call themselves "no frills".

So when KLM e-mailed me saying they were doing a spring offer of S$850 return flights to Europe, I thought I'd have a look since I paid S$1,600 only in February.

And sure enough, if you find an unpopular day (typically Wednesday), you can get the advertised S$850 fare, excluding tax(es) and surcharges. Of course, those taxes and surcharges are not optional; the all inclusive price? S$1,548.

What other industry allows the sticker price to be advertised with an arbitrary but mandatory element (totally 50% of the value) only added at the till? All KLM achieved was to sucker me to their website with a lie, thereby reducing brand trust and loyalty.

Wagging Singapore's Long Tail

I've mentioned before that Singapore seems to struggle with Long Tail effects. Singapore's international reputation is of modernity, technology and Internet savvy; odd then that online purchasing is still rare here. PayPal-style electronic money seems even rarer with deals either occurring at bricks'n'mortar stores or cash at MRT stations. One eBay vendor that I looked at listed a shop in Sim Lim IT center as their physical store but if you check out the address, there is no sign board, no stock, just a crappy mobile phone accessories store. They'd likely done a deal to use the shop as a pick-up point. Bad idea as there were established shops selling the item for less just 2 floors down.

One slight exception is craigslist which seems to tick over at low revs and is a popular spot for expat garage sales. Now with RSS feeds on each section, you can subscribe directly to that sub-topic. If/when I buy a house, this is how I will furnish it.

I posted up an old RAM stick on craigslist the other week; it hasn't sold but I was mightily amused by the one reply I did get. Bear in mind it's worth about £8, best offer secures:

Hello seller,
My name is Engr.frank Smith,From New York, And i have come across your item on viva street and i am willing to pay you $ 700.00USD for the item including the shipping to west africa cos am buying it for my younger brother that lives in west africa and i will be making your payment via BANK TO BANK TRANSFER OR PAYPAL ACCOUNT PAYMENT and i want you to give me your full detail for the payment information like this:

NAME
ADDRESS
CITY
STATE
COUNTRY
EMAIL

Pls reply me back immediately so that i can continue with your payment right away.
Nice doing business with you
Engr.frank smith.

It's laughably bad even after years of Nigerian advance fee frauds but I wonder if this kind of extravagant offer works better here? Hard to say as greed is a universal weakness.

Wealth, Success & Prosperity. Guaranteed.

The local Chinese temple ran 12 days of celebrations over the CNY (6th Feb - 23 Feb) and their game plan for devotees was comprehensive. Suggested topics for supplication were success at work, excellence in your studies, good interpersonal relationships, good marriage, to ask for a life partner or offspring, avoidance of lawsuits and lastly, safety & security for one's family.

First, to ensure the temple's control of wealth in this year of the Rat, they permitted devotees to nourish their vault (you could donate money to the temple). In fact, three vaults; Heavenly vault for the future, Earthly vault for past debts and the Waterly (sic) vault for the present.

7th day of New Year (13h Feb): Man's Birthday. Deities descend to grant wishes which are granted on the 15th Feb as the heavenly deity, Heavenly First Official Emperor descends from heaven.

8th day (14th Feb): Jade Emperor's Birthday. Celebrations run from 11pm through to 3am with an experienced priest from China officiating. Prayer packs (incense paper, fruits) were available for S$50 (£17).

15th day (21st Feb): Heavenly First Official Emperor. This is an important one as wishes made on this day are said to be 10 times more likely to come true than those made on other days.

Throughout, complimentary vegetarian noodles (bee hoon) were available. Although not a spiritual belief system, renowned feng shui master Mr. LI Yu-Lin was on-site for advice also. I didn't attend but to Westerners (Christians), the unashamed emphasis on self and money is a notable difference of tone.

Hokkien is Chinese for Yiddish

Yiddish has given the English language some great words. Who hasn't admired someone's chutzpah, been called a klutz, kvetched about work, aspired to be a mensch or watched a schmaltzy movie? We sprinkle our thoughts with these strange words whatever our religious persuasion, partly because of their evocative, onomatopoeic charm and sometimes they are just the bon mot.

Singaporeans use Hokkien in the same way, as raisins in a linguistic scone. And there is a saying that the 5 'k's define the Hokkien character:

1. Kiasu: afraid of losing, being beaten
2. Kiasi: afraid of dying
3. Kiabo: afraid of having nothing
4. Kiabor: afraid of the wife
5. Kia Chenghu: afraid of the government

There's a couple of others that spring up. Kaygao means to be very calculative, scheming, Ke kiang means trying to be smart while Kiamsap means stingy.

I am bemused by the tension between kiasu and kiasi when applied to stocks and investments. They correspond to bull and bear sentiments and for a Hokkien holding stock, it must be a sort of personal hell trying to avoid either losing out or losing the lot. Oy vey!

Trust me, it's real money

I received an old style $2 note in change and shown in large copperplate writing was This note is legal tender. A quick check in the wallet and it's written on all of them, although modern ones use smaller letters with less prominence. This particular note is of the Ship series, issued between 1984 and 1999. [Checkout the $10,000 note (= ₤3,300).]

I appreciate the concept of legal tender, something which was tested by the guy ahead of me at the supermarket checkout who succeeded in buying $21.20 of goods with a $1,000 note. Technically, they could have refused under the rules of Legal Tender.

My point is that the bank note design struggles against our increasingly cynical attitude to product marketing such as Real Leather (leather is leather, a shoe maker of distinction just puts "leather"). From there, it's only a short step to "Unlimited offer (conditions apply)", "99% fat free", "New & Improved" and "Free Gift (with purchase)".

I predict the text will get smaller on successive bank note issues.