The Asian reporter., August 07, 2023, Page 7, Image 7

OPINION / U.S.A.
August 7, 2023
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
MY TURN
n Wayne Chan
An amazing trip with a number
of money-saving caveats
ook, I like saving money as much as
the next guy, but sometimes,
saving money shouldn’t always be
the highest priority.
I sign up for discount
programs. I seek out
Black Friday sales. I’m
always on the lookout for
particularly good bar-
gains.
With
some
purchases, though, the
adage “you get what you
pay for” comes into play.
Case in point — the trip
to China with my brother
Steve.
I love my little brother. I call him my
little brother because he’s younger, but
there’s nothing “little” about him. He’s
about four or five inches taller than me.
And I’m pretty tall.
In my previous career as an import/
export specialist, I travelled to Asia a lot,
particularly China. Steve, who has a law
degree, never had an opportunity to travel
to China.
A few years ago, when our mother was
still with us, mom mentioned to me that
Steve had expressed interest in going to
China to visit the normal things a tourist
would see.
Not long after, mom passed. We all miss
her, even though we know it’s just a part of
life.
But I remembered what mom told me
about Steve, so I had a thought which I
shared with him. Why don’t we go to China
together? Just us two brothers. In honor of
mom. Steve thought it was a good idea as
well.
So Steve started researching the trip.
After looking at the various options, he
presented his choice — two weeks in
China visiting Beijing and Shanghai. The
cost of the whole trip, including airfare
from the U.S. and within China, hotels,
ground transportation, and some meals:
$799.00.
I couldn’t believe he found such a great
deal. It was one of the most memorable
trips of my life. Although I had been to
many of the places before — the Bund in
Shanghai, the Great Wall, the Forbidden
City — there’s something so much more
meaningful when you’re doing it with your
brother — and during his first time.
It was a terrific trip, and we saved
money to boot!
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Not too long ago, back here at home,
Steve and I had lunch. At one point, he said
he’d mentioned our trip together to one of
his friends. His friend told Steve he
thought it sounded fun and exciting and
that he and Steve should go to China
L
together. Steve did his research again and
came up with another option. But, Steve
said, this trip was even quote/unquote,
better!
Two weeks in China to
Shanghai and Beijing,
airfare and hotels, ground
transportation, with day
visits to the Great Wall
and other tourist loca-
tions included, all for the
bargain basement price of
… $299.00.
Bear in mind, he shared
this price with me with a
big grin on his face.
I had questions.
1) Does the plane use normal jet fuel? Or
are they experimenting with reconstituted
french-fry oil?
2) Are seatbelts included in the flight?
Or is that an extra safety add-on?
3) Does the plane actually land or are
participants mandated to parachute out of
the plane? If so, does that count as one of
the included tourist excursions? How are
travellers supposed to get their luggage?
Or do those come with parachutes, too?
4) When visiting the Great Wall, are the
tourists expected to patch up parts of the
wall in disrepair on their way back down?
Seriously though, I did mention that the
reason some of these tour packages are so
affordable is because the Chinese
government is subsidizing a large portion
of the trip to encourage travellers to spend
money once they arrive. For example, on
the tour of the Great Wall, everyone
usually makes a stop at a silk factory along
the way to encourage guests to buy some
products.
I mentioned this to Steve and the
conversation went something like this:
Wayne: You know you’re gonna have to
sit through a stop at the silk factory for an
hour or so before you end up at the Great
Wall, right?
Steve: I don’t care what they do or where
they take me. I’m not going to buy
anything.
Wayne: But that’s the whole problem —
you’re on vacation and you have to go to
these stops every day before they take you
anywhere you want to go!
Steve: I don’t care. They can put me
through a timeshare presentation every
day, if that’s what they want. I won’t buy
anything.
Wayne: Is Carol (Steve’s wife) going on
this trip with you?
Steve: She said she’d love to go, but not
for $299.00.
Carol is a wise woman.
Humor writer Wayne Chan lives in the San Diego area;
cartoonist Wayne Chan is based in the Bay Area.
HAWAI‘I HURRICANES. Children play in the rubble left by the fury of Hurricane Iniki in this September
15, 1992 file photo, taken at Brennecke’s Beach near Poipu Beach, Hawai‘i, on the island of Kauai. Many of
Hawai‘i’s homes are vulnerable to hurricanes. Two-thirds of the single-family homes on Oahu, an island of 1
million people that’s home to Honolulu, have no hurricane protections. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
Hawai‘i could see a big
hurricane season, but
most homes aren’t ready
By Audrey McAvoy
The Associated Press
ONOLULU — Jan Pappas and
Ronald Yasuda hired a contractor
to fasten the roof of their
1960s-era home to the walls with metal
plates and nails so high winds of a
potential hurricane wouldn’t blow it away.
Their motivation? Global warming fuel-
ling natural disasters around the planet.
“It’s happening right now, every place in
the world,” said Pappas, who installed the
so-called hurricane clips after watching
extreme weather in other parts of the
world. “How are we to expect that it’s not
going to happen here to us?”
Many of Hawai‘i’s homes are even more
vulnerable than theirs. Two-thirds of the
single-family homes on Oahu, an island of
1 million people that’s home to Honolulu,
have no hurricane protections. That lack of
preparedness is unnerving residents this
hurricane season as the islands prepare
for the possibility of a one-two weather
punch: the increased odds of a tropical
cyclone that come with any El Niño year
combined with climate-fuelled ocean
warming that could mean bigger and more
frequent tropical storms around the
islands overall.
El Niño, a naturally occurring warming
of equatorial waters in the central and
eastern
Pacific,
affects
weather
worldwide. Already this year, Hawai‘i has
felt its wrath as a tropical storm passed
south of the Big Island. On top of that,
warming oceans heated by climate change
could strengthen tropical storms and
nudge them farther north, potentially
putting them on a collision course with
H
Hawai‘i.
Hawai‘i’s experience stands in contrast
to the U.S. territory of Guam, where
stronger building codes and years of
rebuilding after powerful storms means
most homes are now made of sturdy con-
crete. In May, a Category 4 typhoon with
maximum sustained winds of 150 mph
(241 kph) slammed into the island. The
storm destroyed some older homes, but the
concrete
ones
generally
emerged
unscathed.
Many of Hawai‘i’s single-family homes
are single-wall construction, a style
phased out only in the 1970s, said Gary
Chock, a licensed structural engineer.
Hawai‘i’s temperate climate means
homes don’t need to trap heat, so most
don’t have an additional wall to contain
insulation. Structurally, their foundations
aren’t often properly anchored to the
ground. Their lower cost made them
Hawai‘i’s preferred construction style for
decades.
They proved particularly vulnerable to
powerful winds during Hurricane Iwa,
which just missed Kauai in 1982, and
Hurricane Iniki, which slammed directly
into Kauai a decade later.
“The entire roof of the home might be
decapitated by wind,” Chock said of
single-wall homes hit by Iniki. “And the
whole roof, in one piece, would just fly off
the walls, and the rest of the structure
would fall apart thereafter.”
Iniki damaged or destroyed 41% of
Kauai’s 15,200 homes with 130- to
160-mph (209- to 257-kph) winds. Seven
people were killed, and 100 were injured.
After Iwa, new homes had to have their
Continued on page 14
Are you a Facebook user? You have until August 25
to apply for a share of a $725M settlement
By Barbara Ortutay
The Associated Press
.S. Facebook users have a few
weeks left to apply for their share
of a $725 million privacy
settlement that parent company Meta
agreed to pay late last year.
Meta is paying to settle a lawsuit
alleging the world’s largest social media
platform allowed millions of its users’ per-
sonal information to be fed to Cambridge
Analytica, a firm that supported Donald
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Anyone in the U.S. who had a Facebook
account at any time between May 24, 2007
and December 22, 2022 is eligible to re-
ceive a payment. To apply for the settle-
ment, users may fill out a form and submit
U
it online, or print it out and mail it. The
deadline is August 25.
It’s not clear how much money indivi-
dual users will receive. The larger the
number of people submitting valid claims,
the smaller each payment will be since the
money has to be divided among them.
The case sprang from 2018 revelations
that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties
to Trump political strategist Steve Ban-
non, paid a Facebook app developer for
access to the personal information of about
87 million users of the platform. That data
was then used to target U.S. voters during
the 2016 campaign that culminated in
Trump’s election as the 45th president.
Uproar over the revelations led to a
contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by U.S.
Continued on page 15
Far mer s Mar ket
Thur sdays on t he Plaza
Veget ables
F
Fr uit
S
Sweet & Savor y Bit es
m ontavillam arket.org
E
EBT M
Mat t ch
h