2010: The Year of "I Got It"

I'm still waiting for i-Pearl Inc to say "I got it" and refund my $29.95 for the damaged laptop case. Or at least tell me to go to hell.

The year has begun well.

My best friend Julie from waaaaaaaaaay back in kindergarten, had the top of her lung removed a couple of days ago and has been given the all-clear. This, despite a very informed friend (head of a pulmonary critical care unit) telling me lung cancer is a tough one.

I'd sent her a hamper of goodies but the internet hamper company didn't acknowledge right away for some reason. During that gap I had ample time to start wondering if my money had disappeared off to Nicaragua (a country I love, but you can disappear - voluntarily - pretty easily there).

When I finally got an acknowledgement, it still left a lingering mistrust. I asked my friend to tell me what was in the hamper - just to see if the stated goods matched the actual.

I thus declare 2010 to be the year of "I Got It".

I assert there is a disturbing trend towards non-responding - due to a mixture of overload, apathy and/or arrogance - and it's damaging to the fabric the holds everything together: trust.

It's by no means rocket science but as a sage friend once said, "People do not have to be informed so much as reminded." I posted this on FastCompany:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/lynette-chiang/247-customer-evangelist/2010-year-saying-i-got-it

Have a read, feel free to post a comment, and resolve to say "I got it" in 2010. The world will be a so much better place.

2010: New Year's Resolution: Comfortable shoes!

Today I went shoe shopping (no I didn't buy the above boots, despite turning Japanese)

The Handsomest Man in Cuba: Who's picture is it anyway?

I got an interesting letter from someone today:


Hi,

Seeing that the Cubans are so poor and that dear old man has worked so hard everyday did you, will you or have you given him any money for using his picture?I was back to Cuba this past March and gave him a picture I took of HIM!!! I wonder what he would do if he saw himself on your book? I'm thinking there is something wrong with this ... Sandra

It's a reasonable question: should I give the man on the cover of my book money? More to the point - just how much?

This reader feels I am somehow taking advantage of this man - profiting from by having his face on my book. Here's my reply:

Thanks for writing. I appreciate your thinking on this - though you're making a baseline assumption that he is poorer than me. In many ways, he's probably better off. He charges $1 for 2 little photos he processes in that bucket in a prime tourist location. He makes more money in a day than many Cubans do in a month. He's probably going to be taken care of in old age or if he gets sick. I, on the other hand, would become a bag lady if I stopped working tomorrow. I may eventually get royalties on the book but as my name isn't Grisham, Bryson or Rowling, probably not in my lifetime. Yet, I feel in some small way, my book continues to bring business to this photographer - many people who have read my book and gone to Cuba and gotten him to take their photos, as you can see here. I believe that the best contribution we can make to someone's life is not a handout, but to help them, as far as possible, be self sufficient. (What's that adage about teaching a man to fish?) The photographer and I are helping each other, and that feels like community to me. And it's what a Cuban referred to as "the quiet" that I talk about in the book.


What do you think?

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On another note, here's an email I received from a reader and Bike Friday customer in Maui:

Hi Lynette,

I wanted to tell you, I was in Holiday & Co. in Makawao yesterday, that's the women's clothing store that we went into and you almost bought something, or maybe you did?? I do their books, so while I was hanging out the woman from the next door store came in with a visitor, and she says to her friend, "Susan is a cyclist too, she went to....blah blah....., what's the name of that little bike you have??" When I said BF, her friend said, "Oh, I know that one, I want to go to Cuba so I bought the book by that woman who went there, blah blah" She was literally THRILLED when she found out that I knew you, and she insisted that I tell you how much she loved your book, and that she hopes to go there too. The other woman wanted to buy your book immediately too.

I know your life is peppered with such tales, here's another one for your collection! Love to you, Susan

Picture: Susan and I atop Haleakala, Maui, 2006. 
More Gal in Hawaii 2006