Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Security is a sensitive topic for Americans.  In the post 911/War on Terror/Iraq era, it's easy to see why.  Men are in harms way, and the country remains on a war footing.

At what price?

American airports are starkly reminiscent of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  People bustle to and fro, under the watchful eyes of security officers, and accompanied by the droning of propaganda.  "The threat level is orange", blare the loudspeakers.  Television monitors tell the stories boys and families damaged by combat.  Even the very name of the border patrol — homeland defence — conjures images of threats and war.

This photograph, taken on the F Concourse at Philadelphia International Airport, shows no fewer than 9 visible surveillance cameras, and as you walk further you will discover more — a dozen in total.  Some of them are less than two yards apart.

My friends in America, as you head to your elections, ask yourselves whether the fear fomented by the current administration is justified.  Is it rational, or paranoid?  Ask yourselves what the right thing is for Iraq, too. 

I am not discounting how hard these problems are, nor would it be appropriate for me to suggest that another could have done a better job than Mr. Bush. He's your President, you elected him, and presumably he's what the majority of your electorate wanted.  Besides, I don't have the right to vote in your country.  

The situation deserves a real debate, that's all. After all, the price of security is liberty.

I had quite a mountain of gear with me over the last couple of weeks.  Aside from the usual vacation stuff, I also dragged along:

1. A laptop for storing and editing photos and blog postings.  Both of the resorts we stayed at had a place somewhere that had a net connection, although it was inconveniently not in the room.  All editing was done with Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006, and all blog postings were composed offline (they charge by the minute for network access!) using Windows LiveWriter beta.
2. A Nikon D50 digital SLR, with a 70-300mm lens (that's how the flamingo shots were taken), and the stock 18 to 55mm lens that came with the camera body.  Tripod too.
3. A Sony HDR-SR1 high def camcorder.  I shot 18Gbytes of video.  It will take some time to sort through it, now that we're back.
4. A Nokia N80i cameraphone, equipped with WiFi.  Very handy for quick snapshots, and also for approving blog comments in hot spots.  I bought a Mexican SIM, as well, but made only a few phone calls with it.
5. A Nokia N93 cameraphone.  I shot quite a bit of video footage with the N93, in various situations where it was inconvenient to get the SR1 out, or where I didn't want to risk the SR1 (ie. moving at high speed in a boat on the Gulf of Mexico).  Along with the N93, I also brought the Nokia DT-22 tripod clampstand for the device, which makes a world of difference in holding the phone steady.
6. The Solio solar powered batter charger, seen here charging my son's iPOd. Need power on the go?  Got plenty of light?  Solio is the solution.

Did you know that Winston Churchill and his wife took separate vacations — he to paint (preferably at a beach), and she on tour?  Well, we don’t take separate vacations, but certainly by the time Thursday of last week rolled around we were all ready for a little relief from touring around.  So, we shopped.  Guyaberas (the ubiquitous shirt worn by Meridano’s), panama hats, table cloths, soccer shirts, and more.  We had a great time.

We also ate and drank!  Ice cream at Colon (a 100 year old ice cream parlor on the square), exotic fruit juices at Jugo de California, Yucatecan specialties like Pollo Pibil and Pok Chuc at the Main Street Restaurant.  In the evenings, we also ate at Pancho’s (good food, awesome mojito’s), and Vino y Pane (poor Italian, to be avoided).  Best deal on a breakfast buffet?  The Colonial Hotel — $6 for adults, $4 for kids buys you all you can eat fruit, pastries, eggs cooked to order, juice and Mexican specialities.

Part way through the day we ran into our friend the saw player again, and this time I caught him on video using our Sony HDR-SR1 camcorder.  The original is in high definition, so this streamed video doesn’t quite do it justice. 

Finally, Friday morning we packed up and hit the road back to Cancun, for one more day at the beach. This is the view of the pool and ocean, shot with a Nokia N93 cameraphone, from the lobby of the wonderful Royal Sands where we were booked to stay. 

An unfortunate screw up resulted in them renting our beach front villa to someone else, so we were forced to stay at another resort — the Royal Islander.

Beach, dinner, margaritas, and one last sunrise the next day, which I caught on the N93, clamped into the tripod accessory you can get with it.  Apologies for the wind noise, but it was quite windy!

Then off to the airport.  It was a zoo!  Despite getting there more than two hours ahead of time, and the fabulous help of the very efficient Mexican team at the airport, we got to the gate just as final boarding was announced over the PA.

From Cancun, we flew to Philadelphia, then on to Ottawa.  I caught these pictures out the window of the airplane on the final leg, just as the sun was going down. The location of the plane, between two layers of cloud, creates a very dramatic effect.  Both taken with a Nokia N80i cameraphone.

A common pricing practice used to be to price products differently for different markets.  When I worked for Microsoft Canada, for instance, we used to routinely price our products at the US price, converted to Canadian dollars, and then augmented by 10 or 15%… a small price hike that Canadian customers bore for the privilege of being Canadian.  Since the English language version was sold in both the US and Canada, the trick was to jack up prices just high enough that a Canadian customer wouldn't choose to buy "grey market" goods from the US.  European transfer pricing was even higher, as there really isn't much of a market for German, or Scandinavian language products outside of their home markets.

Transfer pricing still exists in some industries, enforced by egregious contract terms which penalize the consumer for cross border shopping.  Just try, for instance, to buy a car and bring it across the border.  Chrysler's contract voids the warranty when you do that.

By and large, however, I thought that the practice had become less common in the internet age.  Software is just bits, and transfer pricing is hard to justify when you're just shipping bits around.  How wrong I was. 

This afternoon I tried to purchase Apple Quicktime Pro 7.1.  I went to Apple.com, found QuickTime Pro for $29.97, added it to my cart, and tried to check out.  Nope… can't put a Canadian credit card or address into the US Apple Store.  Heading over to Apple Canada, I discovered that they're asking $37.99.  The correct price, converted, is $34.76.  To download the same bits in Canada, Apple asks a 9% premium.

Apple isn't the worst violator, though.  Microsoft Canada lists Office 2007 Professional Upgrade for $439, versus $329.95 in the US.  The correctly converted price is $382.74. That's a 14.7% premium.

It's a stupid and greedy practice which should be abandoned.  Canadians already have less disposable income than Americans, due to the tax regime here, and we tend to be much more price conscious than our brethren south of the border.  If prices were lower, these corporations might see higher uptake.  Certainly when I did the MS-DOS 6 launch here in Canada, we saw that.  We priced our software slightly below the US price in order to make a natural C$50 price point, and saw nearly twice the sales.

Transfer pricing: just say no.

Wednesday we headed west out of Merida to the Gulf of Mexico and the tiny fishing village of Celestun.  It’s only about 80 kilometres from Merida, but the lack of a high speed road, and the number of Mayan towns you have to travel through on the way turn that 80 kilometer trip into a 1.5 hour drive.

Celestun is known for its biosphere on the Rio Grande, and the birds (including Flamingos) which you can see there.  When we got there, we chartered a couple of  boats in town, and then headed out for a 2.5 hour boat trip down the river, and through the mangroves.

First stop was at Bird Island, a sanctuary for pelicans and cormorants.  Its shoreline jammed with birds, the island is quite a sight to see.

Next stop, the petrified forest.  This isn’t a fossilized forest, but rather a forest that has been preserved for 180 years after sea water flooded an existing forest.  The tree strunks are heavily salinated, and the ground hardened with salt.

The boats were tied up to some of the living mangroves, and we walked into the forest.

Peter chose to leap a puddle of seawater, not realizing that the ground on the other side was considerably less hardened than what he had leapt from.  What vacation would be complete without mud up to your knees?

After the petrified forest, our boat driver headed out in search of flamingos.  On the way, I snapped this photo of a white egret in flight.

The flamingos can be found in shallow water on the river.  Interesting flamingo facts:

• Female flamingos are bigger than male flamingoes.
• The pink color comes from the shrimp that they feed upon.  They need to eat for 12 hours per day
• Every evening at 8 PM, the flamingos finish feeding for the day, and then fly away in order to avoid the crocodiles that emerge from the mangroves at about that time to… feed on flamingos.

Here are three flamingos and an egret hidden in the mangrove.

There are hundreds of flamingos in the shallows of the river.  There were flocks all around us. 

Flamingos sure look funny when they take flight, running along the surface of the water, and flapping their wings until the are aloft.

Unlike the flamingos which feed in the open, egrets look for food in the shallows, amongst the mangroves.  I caught this fellow perched on a branch, just above water level. 

There are also osprey, which take fish from the river.  This particular bird in flight has a fish in its claws.

Next we took a trip through a tunnel in the mangroves.  It was quite a different from the experience of having been on the open river.  The mangroves completely enclose the boat.

There are crocodiles which live among the mangroves, but the only living thing we saw was this duck.

Next our driver pulled up to a dock at the mangrove edge.  A short board walk led into the forest.

We all had a swim in the cenote that the boardwalk led to.

On the way back, I snapped this photo of a couple of men crabbing. 

And then we arrived back at the beach for dinner, drinks and the sunset.  The house specialty was fresh caught grouper filet stuffed with… fresh caught crab and shrimp.  Yum!

Down the beach, in fact, there were a couple of fisherman cleaning their catch, and attracting a huge flock of birds wanting to help.

Following dinner we headed back to Merida.  We got lost several times on the way, but ultimately made it about an hour late.