The upsetting incident of the guitar, bought from Virgin

So this month is my birthday. I usually buy some expensive electronic, but this time I am being thrifty because I am saving for an MBA next year. And being as though I always wanted to learn to play it, I decided to get a guitar.

I had seen a model at “Instrument Garage” a couple of years ago that costs 150 dollars. Now I don't know much about guitars, but I know that metal strings are better than nylon strings. And that guitar from “Instrument Garage” had metal strings. Anyway, I was at virgin in ABC and found a guitar there that was black and with metal strings. 

I asked a salesman how much it costs. He said that it costs 44$. I was surprised. Next to it was a yellow guitar with nylon strings. I asked him how much does the yellow guitar costs. He said 65$. I asked him “How come?”. He said that it had nylon strings. I explained to him that a nylon strings should cost less. He said he didn’t know and that I couldn’t ask him this question. So seeing a good deal, I decided to buy the black guitar. I mean I am a beginner. I don’t know if I will ever actually learn to play it. So I said to hell with it.

Carrying the guitar case in the Service I took home, I started thinking how usually I get ripped off when I buy stuff from Virgin. I thought that here for once I got a bargain. When I got home, I opened the guitar to play it. It had nylon Strings. I was upset, but then thought that this was the standard I have come to expect from Virgin. (One day I will tell the story of the Samsung phone I bought from these guys).

Never mind I thought, if they put metal strings on the display guitar, I can get some other place to put the metal strings. Now I didn’t want to go to instrument guitar. I had asked them a lot about that other guitar and I wasn’t going to go there with my new guitar to put the strings. I wasn’t going to ask Virgin for a refund as I gathered they would tell me that these guitars come with nylon strings and that the display guitar was just for display.

Instead, I decided to go to shop X (whose name I will not mention). I had asked a cousin of mine who is a musician about the procedure to confirm and he said “Go to shop X, the guy will change the strings while you are there and will charge you a few buck, shi 30 thousand ya3ne for everything”. It seemed like a good deal.

I went to shop X and told him I wanted metal strings on the guitar.

 “How much it will cost?”. 

“Oh, these strings need changing”, the guy said  “it should be 28,000 liras, but you will have to leave it here”. 

“Cool, I said. I guess while I am here I will get a few other items, I want a bag for the guitar and a few picks”.

The guy showed me. In the end I agreed to pay him 20,000 in advance. He will keep the bag and picks aside for me for the next day when I will get the guitar.

Next day comes.

I go to the guitar place. The guy is there.

“Hi, I came yesterday. Where is the guitar”.

 “Oh here it is” the guy says pointing to a guitar that is set up on a guitar mount.

I take a look and what do you know, the guitar has nylon strings. There is a paper bag under the strings. I would learn from the salesman of Shop X that is says “Nylon Strings”. 

I ask him “What did you do? These are nylon strings? I asked for metal strings.”

The guy says “Well this is a classical guitar, I can’t put metal strings on it”. 

“So what did you do? These strings look the same?”

The guy picks up the paper bag and shows me that it says “Nylon Strings”.

“Ok what did you do with the original nylon strings?”

“I threw them out”.

The guy getting upset. So was I.

“Ok fine, I will just pay what I owe you for the strings and I want to buy a pick. I don’t want the bag anymore”.

“Take a pick” the guy shows me a box of pick for me to take a pick.
“I want the bigger picks”.
“The guys looks at me like he wants to punch me”.

I take a pick, my guitar and get out.

All the way home I kept thinking that he didn’t change the strings, he only tightened them.

Back home, I am playing with my guitar. (Playing with and not really Playing it). I notice that the first three strings which look like springs seem to be cut differently at the end. It also seems that they have a slightly different color. When I got the guitar they looked golden. These spring strings look more sliver.

I think that if he were to bother to cut strings, he might as well change them. But what I don’t understand is since I explicitly asked him for metal strings and since he could have tightened the old strings, then why would he even bother to change them. Why not tell me “I couldn’t put metal strings and so I tightened them for you, here’s your money”.

Now my conscious felt bad, but I also offered him to pay for the strings. Indeed I already paid 20,000, he wanted another 9,000 which I would have paid hadn’t he refused. And most importantly, I asked for metal strings. He should have told me back then that it wasn’t possible.

Anyway, as I shared this story with a religious person I knew, she told me that if I felt bad maybe I should put 9,000 in the church basket. She also said that I was clearly in the right here. But somehow it all doesn’t feel right.

Update:

So I went to virgin today and I looked again at the black guitar with metal strings. Indeed, it did have metal strings, except when I looked at the top handle of the guitar, its string holders were actually made of metal. This was a different guitar then the model I bought. Yet it was this guitar which was advertised at 44$. This is a new low for virgin: displaying merchandise while selling something else. 

Solar Panels in northern Africa

This is a region that is full of desert lands and that gets a lot of sunlight. Most of the land is uninhabited and really dirt cheap. I think the best possible utilization for this land is to build massive solar farms over it. The energy generated on those solar farms could be stored as hydrogen from the electrolysis of sea water. The hydrogen would then be sold on the market just like oil is today. This could fuel the future, a future global economy of 345 trillion dollars where everyone has the same level of affluence as an American citizen.

Why not increase Global Wealth?

All these debates about jobs going overseas and the problems they produce, one thing has skipped most people: Why not increase Global Wealth? What if the world's per-capita GDP was the same as the American per capital GDP, how big would the market be for iPADs laptops, cars etc... ? How many people would be working in the United States. So far in the industrialized world farmers are paid subsidies to reduce their agricultural output all the while people are starving in Somalia. What if those Somalis were working making shoes or cloths or whatever and the farmers in America were increasing their output to feed them.

Adam Smith correctly noted that the total wealth of a country is the total work output of a country. And today we have a problem with the global output. People are underemployed all around the world and therefore there is a problem of global poverty and unemployment in the united states.

The real solution is through global policies to increase global output. moving from a 74 trillion global economy to a 345 trillion global economy.


To better illustrate what I am talking by I'll expand the example about the American Agriculture subsidy/Somali starving. Basically, the reason why farmers are being paid not to produce more food, is because if they do then they would depress the prices of food, the market for food is only so big. So we can think of the extra food not being produced as worthless food, or free food. Now, consider the african not working and starving, if they work they will be able to afford food and thus increase the market for food. The food that was not produced before in the united states would be produced as it would not longer be free food but food that is worth money.
So there you go, wealth gets created and all that would be needed is some initial investment to say open up a shoe factory or whatever somewhere in africa. The farmers already have the potential to grow more food.

Electric Bicycles a call to lebanese inventors

I have seen this new bike called the optibike (http://www.optibike.com/). It is a mixed electrical mechanical bicycle. It can combine electric power with pedal power to go very fast. I am thinking that this is the kind of bike that we need in Beirut if bicycle transportation is to become viable. With all the slopes that we have in the country this will make it easier to go up the roads, for example the sessine slope.

One thing that I think the optibike is missing is regenerative braking. I think a bike with such a braking system will utilize the liIon battery to its maximum.

So this is a call to lebanese inventors to come up with a bike that is like the optibike but with the addition of regenerative braking. Once invented we will lobby Parliament for bike lanes all over beirut.

Mining bulletin boards Data

I am wondering what happens to all the data stored in online chat forums and discussion boards. Do you think that they can be mined by companies to produce some important metadata about individuals, trends and policies. Can they be used for artificial intelligence research, for example language processing and "watson" types answer robots. This has already been happening on the web with targeted advertising. For example you read an e-mail about a wedding on gmail and you get an advert about wedding dresses (there are smarter examples, see if you can think of some or remember some that happened to you).

What is different about online discussion board data is that it groups several opinions on a certain topic, exploiting this data could be a topic for an interesting research paper. For example an analysis of the lebanese online forums could reveal what sample of lebanese think about some issues and be used by politicians to target political campains. It could also be used to israelis mossad to identify trends in lebanese thinking. In fact i do think that the mossad is exploiting this data in online forums. At least building profiles of people who use them, same as the CIA is doing with facebook. But for me the biggest potential is in the AI research. All the conversations going on can be exploited by a soficticated computer to simulate intelligence.

Solution for the Housing Problem in Lebanon

I have posted something about this before, but after some thought here's another solution:

We all know the real reason why Lebanese real estate prices have skyrocketed: The Gulf Arabs. Their voracious appetite for Lebanese real estate can only be matched by their appetite for Lebanese women. Therefore a lot of Lebanese have suggested to ban them from buying property in lebanon (which they think solves the problem for real estate at least). This solution however will deprive Lebanon of much needed foreign capital and can cause a real estate burst in Lebanon not unlike the American burst with all its ramifications. Furthermore such a move could affect the Lebanese diaspora in the gulf who would be retaliated against.

Another solution that someone has suggested to me was to put a ceiling on the price of land and houses, so that a landlord can only charge so much for a property he wants to sell. One could see the hand of socialism creeping in here, and the ramification for property rights. Now the solution I will propose will have some socialist feel, but won't be as intrusive as forcing people to sell their land at some fixed price, which would end up benefiting the khaleejis anyway.

The solution would be good old taxes. A progressive tax on all real estate sales so that about 40 percent of the price of a house is paid to the government. With this money the government can build low cost housing for those who can't afford it, and subsidize the old landlords who are renting with the old rent law. The plan would aim to use the money as wisely as possible to make home owners out of most lebanese. With a 40 percent tax, for every 3 houses sold at least 1 house can be given to a lebanese family who can't afford one.

Stormy March

The heaviest storms we have seen so far this year in lebanon. It hailed so much in Antelias that it seemed like it was snowing. We are heading towards the March 14 commemoration with the Hariri movement monopolizing billboards all over the country, with their anti hizballah slogan. The question any reasonable person without amnesia should ask is why haven't they protesting their weapons when they had the majority? Why did they ally themselves with the party in 2005? Why did they reelect Berri in 2009 ?