{"id":47396,"date":"2019-07-27T09:36:40","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T13:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=47396"},"modified":"2019-07-27T13:39:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T17:39:14","slug":"weekend-advice-from-frankfurt-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=47396","title":{"rendered":"Weekend advice from Frankfurt, Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Ed Sonderling\u2019s excellent piece\u00a0Be A Capitalist<\/em>, click\u00a0here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Now to today\u2019s blog:<\/p>\n

You don’t want to do business in Europe. The bureaucracy and regulations will drive you bananas.<\/p>\n

I’d give you a thousand stories. But they’re all boring and in the category, “I don’t make this stuff up.”<\/p>\n

I don’t hear the same stories in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The gifts we give our banks<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There are banks that pay you 2%-plus on the money in your checking or savings accounts. If your bank doesn’t pay you something on your spare cash, go elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Don’t do stupid<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

+ Don’t leave anything in your safe deposit box. Better yet, close it. Bank safety deposit boxes are not safe. Check here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

+ The average level of added sugar in the U.S.\u00a0 — 15% of our daily calories — is associated with an 18% increase in risk for cardiovascular disease mortality. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

+ Don’t swallow dietary supplements made outside the U.S. or Canada. No one checks quality control. The pills often don’t match what’s on the label. Some of the ingredients are positively dangerous.<\/p>\n

+ Watch for ultra-cheap contract lenses. They can damage your eyes. Click here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

+ Be wary of CBD. It’s marketed and sold as a supplement, not a medication. Hence it’s unregulated. The FDA does not regulate the safety and purity of dietary supplements. Most do you no good. Ones made overseas can seriously harm you. (Second warning.) For more on CBD, click here.<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Latest travel tips<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

+I have arrhythmia. If I stand too long in this line, I’ll have a stroke. That’s what I told the incoming passport control line at\u00a0 Frankfurt. That cut my wait down from 2 hours-plus to two minutes. Good to be old and geriatric.<\/p>\n

+ Business class is the bargain of the air. But you gotta work at it. Your travel agent may have a wholesale deal. You can get a twofer from some airlines and some credit cards. Ask. My business class seat — through a travel agent — cost less than half if I had bought it online. My seat mate was going from New York to Mumbai. On United, his round-trip\u00a0 was $6,800. On Lufthansa, it was $3,000. I don’t make this stuff up.<\/p>\n

+ Flattery will get you a better seat. Having a ticket issued by the airline you’re flying on will get you better service.<\/p>\n

+ Airports are getting free WiFi. I’m writing this in the Frankfurt airport. It’s 16 megs down and 36 up. That’s much faster than I get on my country DSL line.<\/p>\n

+ They have WiFi on planes. Here’s a Lufthansa offering.\u00a0 Speedy Gonzales strikes again.<\/p>\n

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You have to pay for this incredible speed.<\/p>\n

The “magic” hearing aids — my ongoing research<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Hearing aids are not magical. There’s no other “new” technology that’s as flawed as hearing aids. Hence I use Sennheiser headphones for TV. I use Resound which I got from Costco in meetings and to hear business presentations. They cost $2800 and eat batteries.<\/p>\n

I tested many cheap hearing aids. Like under $100. None worked well.<\/p>\n

For listening to music and speaking on my iPhone, I prefer Apple’s Airpods.<\/p>\n

How you see hearing aids depends on how lousy your hearing is. If you can’t hear anything, you’ll be happy with anything.<\/p>\n

I can hear, but not well in the theater or in the movies. So I get the earphones they give you — if you ask. Some work. Some don’t.<\/p>\n

I have no solutions.<\/p>\n

I’m fascinated with the on-going saga of Jeffrey Epstein<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

F Scott Fitzgerald said it best<\/p>\n

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different”<\/p>\n

Look what I found in the Lufthansa lounge at JFK<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Google translated it to\u00a0How Boris Johnson incites his compatriots against Europe<\/em><\/p>\n

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Harry Newton, who resurrected the flower, even though it’s not Slovenia’s national flower, but could be with this week’s boiling hot European summer.<\/p>\n