Don't be the last fool to own a diamond

Diamonds are valuable - except for the last fool who owns it.

In a suite at a five-star Hong Kong hotel one Friday morning, a row of 64 pink, blue and red diamonds lay on display, each encased in individual boxes. A line of security guards outnumbering buyers eyeing the boxes, each guard appropriately armed with weapons that would bring down any one silly enough to think the unthinkable.

Chinese buyers wonder around the array of diamonds, each knowing that they share this honour with other privileged invited guests. By mid afternoon all 64 rocks are sold to a handful of buyers for an undisclosed amount of money.

China has the unenviable privilege of being the second largest diamond market in the world after America.

For a rock that has little or no intrinsic value and is in plentiful supply, it has created a US$80 billion industry in China, enough to buy the country of Kenya and mop up all the beautiful islands of Maldives at the same time.

If there is no intrinsic value and it is not scarce, then why are diamonds so valuable?

They are valuable simply because Gerold M. Lauck, from a New York advertising agency and Henry Oppenheimer from De Beers, told us so back in 1938.

Between Gerold and Henry, they invented the intrinsic value of diamonds.

The agency created one of the most powerful campaigns in the world successfully linking the value of love to the size of a rock. De Beers monopolised global production, the supply chain and severely restricted and controlled re-sell markets.

By mid to late 1940s the scene was set to price its products to whatever level the company deemed it to be.

Diamonds are indeed forever, as once bought you will not be able to re-sell it unless of course you can find a bigger fool to buy it from you. 

History is rigged with examples of individuals, companies and governments unsuccessfully selling their diamonds. The disastrous attempt by Israel to offload their US$850 million stockpile of investment-grade diamonds in 1970s was one example. After a long a exhaustive search, they found one buyer - De Beers themselves offering a steeply discounted price. Many dealers and investors fell into hard times as a result of this re-sell void.

Dealers all around the world have an unwritten rule not to buy diamonds from the public unless it is bought back at severely reduced price. Walk down Fifth Avenue New York with a diamond under your arms trying to sell it, would be a futile exercise as a London-based consumer magazine MoneyWatch found out with their decade long test diamond experiment. The magazine tried selling their gem-quality diamond bought 10 years earlier in London and New York, but no retailer nor dealer in either cities were willing to pay cash for it. One dealer was willing to do a diamond-to-diamond swap based on the dealer's valuation and the dealer was non-other than one of De Beers' own chains.

In short when you buy a diamond, you will never be able to realise the price you paid for initially. Many have tried selling and failed. Most simply resign to keeping their diamonds and live under the illusion that they have bought a valuable piece of junk. They have fallen into a value-trap that distills their love into a size of a 1gm rock and mortgaged part of their personal value systems to the whims of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate.

The diamond industry will make sure you do not sell your diamonds. They want you to keep it for good. Diamonds are indeed forever as there simply isn't a re-sell market. So buy diamonds by all means - just do not be the last fool to own it. 

Fried rice is not spelled correctly

Isn't it time "Fried Rice" is spelled "Flied Lice?"

On a wet and cold Saturday afternoon, I chanced upon an old-time American TV series “Charlie Chan” created by Earl Derr Biggers, an American novelist and playwright in the 1930s. “Charlie Chan” was Hollywood’s perspective of the way Chinese spoke English, confusing their “Ls” and their “Rs”. Following a successful run on TV, the theme was repeated in countless films and TV shows, Fu Manchu and the long running British TV series “Mind your language” come to mind.

Notwithstanding the offensive nature of this impression of Asians, I wanted to find out if it is indeed culturally biased.

It is true that the Japanese and Korean language have no distinct English-type “L” and “R” sounds. There is however an in-between sound “Lr” or the “Rl”.

However, for mainland Chinese it’s important to note that the extent of this non-distinct sound differs depending on which part of the country they come from. For instance Northern Chinese has the same non-distinct English-type sound as Koreans and Japanese. Perhaps their proximity to each other has something to do with it. But in Southern China, the Cantonese dialect has a very clear “L” but a semi distinct "R" English-type sound. The result would be confusingly, "Flied Rice".

If we look further afield it gets even more interesting.

The French has problems with their English-type “R” confusing it with the “W”; Germans and Russians have issues with their “V” and W”; Italians with “T” and “D”; Greeks with their “G” and “K”.

Fried rice may turn out sounding like “Fwied Wice” by the French.

Warning: Do not spoil your romantic night out by asking a French to order fried rice in English.

Given that the non-distinct “L” and “R” is not culturally biased, then is this mix-up because of something else? Could it be due to the follies of the English language itself? Not being a phonetic language, learning it can be difficult for non-English speaking cultures, as so often the sound of the words are not the same way as it is spelled.

For instance the sound of “ough” in “rough” is not the same as “plough” or “cough”; the verb “bow” sounds different to the noun “bow” and worst of all the sound of “jail” is spelled “gaol”.

The English language only took on a self appointed dominance since the mid-20th century. Until then, French has been the language of diplomacy and together with German is still the official language of the current European Economic Community. Against popular beliefs the lingua franca for India/Pakistan is not English, it is Hindi or Urdu. And of course none of the Asian economies have English as their first language. According to the British Council, only 12% of the people in the world speak English as a native or as a second language. The rest gets their “Ls”, “Rs”, “Vs”, “Ws”, “Ts” and “Ds” mixed up.

So with 88% of the people in this world speaking English with mixed-up sounds, isn't it time we accept “Flied Lice” for fried rice; “WoWo” for Volvo; “Ordoves” for Hors d'oeuvre and “Cwasong” for croissant?

One day there may even be a long running TV comedy series impersonating an Englishman mis-pronouncing flied lice.

You must be mad to be married

At a bar not too far from the Family Courts in Taipei, Taiwan, I overheard a divorce lawyer slurring his words: 

“You must be mad to get married in Taiwan.”

He must have had a hard day at the divorce courts.

Just recently, a jilted wife in Taiwan filed for divorce from her adulterous husband with unintended consequences. Adultery is a criminal offence in the country and each ‘shot’ of adultery can put you in jail for 4 months. For a 5-year affair with his neighbour the husband was faced with the prospect of a 298-year jail sentence.

The country’s fault-based divorce laws sit in stark contrast with the emerging global adoption of a no-fault divorce laws where couples can get divorced without one person having to prove that the other one is "at fault" for the breakdown of their marriage. New York City in 2012 became the last State in the US to replace their fault-based divorce laws, joining a growing number of other countries.

In our global village many differences between the east and the west are being bridged with cheaper and faster technology, the affairs of the heart is one last bastion of change that is still finding strong resistance within parts of Asia.

According to a recent latest survey done by the justice ministry of Taiwan in April 2013, 82% of people said they opposed decriminalisation of adultery. Most married women surveyed in Taiwan chose to keep this law as they believe making it a criminal offense will stop their husbands cheating on them. I suspect the judiciary also  works on the general policy that divorce is bad and marriage is good and one way to keep people married is to make divorce hard to get by only granting divorce based on a list of state-approved reason, like adultery, insanity, or extreme cruelty.

Unfortunately “unhappiness” does not seem to be listed as a reason.

So if both were unhappy with each other in Taiwan and neither subscribes to being adulterous nor cruel then they are trapped forever. ……till death do us part?

Unless of course if you plead insanity – get yourself diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder.

Coincidentally, in 2012 the prevalence of common mental disorders has doubled over the past 20 years in Taiwan, paralleling increases in unemployment, divorce and suicide, according to the results of a study by Taiwan's top research institute, Academia Sinica. The study highlighted that being a married woman increases the risk of having a mental disorder.

Putting the results of the survey and study together, does this mean that there may be plenty of unhappy women in Taiwan wanting to get out of a marriage – and the only way out is to be mad?

Perhaps the divorce lawyer was not as drunk as I imagined him to be.

Father's Day in Australia

Father's Day with a Dragon, Ox, Rat, two Monkeys and a Rabbit.

The Australians celebrated their Father’s Day last Sunday together with the first day of Spring. It was indeed a glorious day for Melbourne. With the explosion of flowers in my garden the weekend presented itself with a brilliant sun-filled carnival atmosphere.

Holding onto the old mumpsimus that the value of a present defines the level of ones love, the retail industry offered a smorgasbord of gift ideas for the man of the day. One could not escape from the barrage of advertisements; bombarding came from air, sea and land pushing everything from TVs to monogramed torches.

Our family’s notion of not participating in a commercially driven Father’s Day sits unseemly in the lead up to a day that is meant for me (yes I am a dad).  

My daughter arrived with a home-baked flourless orange cake, garnished with manicured strips of curled orange peel, topped with clear crisp icing sugar. She is meticulous when it comes to cooking or presentation of food. Perhaps being a Monkey in the Chinese Zodiac has something to do with it.

My son, the Dragon, came with his usual smile. The Dragon does not do things, it gets things done. No doubt he would claim credit to the cake by other means. He did brew a mean cup of coffee though.

The other daughter, a Rat, the industrious international traveler had decided to add to her life experience and now in a time zone that is 17 hours behind Australia. But I am sure she will be thinking of this day missing the activities.

I then have another Monkey, lost in her own world preparing for the guaranteed sumptuous dinner for me, contributed to a busy kitchen at my place. Her flair for design and ability to up-sell a normal dinner suggests yet another Monkey in our midst.

Not too long into the afternoon, my niece, an Ox, announced her arrival with yet another cake – this time the infamous Durian cake. For the uninitiated, the Durian is the king of fruits in Asia with a smell so pungent that gets the fruit banned from hotels, airlines and even rented cars. Being an Ox, she is methodical and a voluble young woman she is contributed to the festivities on this Father’s Day.

Then the Rabbit wife, fresh from finishing her famous petite Shanghai Egg Tarts, busied herself to being the wonderful host. She made sure we had the right plates and splayd for desserts which by now had filled the entire length of the kitchen bench.

For this Father’s Day the plenitude of foods can only be matched by the decibels created by the people in my home.

I must say, spending your Father’s Day at home with all these animals as well as a Dragon, beats getting a smart HDTV and certainly more relaxing than fighting for a table in an overcrowded, expensive and not to mention pretentious restaurant.

I hope you guys had just a lovely Father’s Day as mine.