The economics of bookstores

There are at least 2 online bookstores in Singapore which offer lower prices in comparison
with bigger stores, if customers opt to self-collect from designated collecting points
instead of home delivery: OpenTrolley and Berkshire Business Books.

I had a friendly exchange with my colleague WP recently about the truth of claims such as
OpenTrolley's price comparisons (before the 5% discount every Tuesday, and inclusive of 7%
GST) with Kinokuniya's price after the 10% discount for loyalty cardholders. So here we go:

Comparison #1: Comics

Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores
Kino's recommended retail price (RRP): $18.57
OpenTrolley's rrp: $20.96
Conclusion: Kino wins round 1 on a T.K.O. even before the 10% discount for cardholders.

Comparison #2: Batman and Philosophy (Book)

Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul
by White, Mark D.; Arp, Robert

Round 1:
Kino's rrp: $32.05 (incl. 7% GST, before any discount)
OpenTrolley's rrp: $25.78 (incl. 7% GST + $1 self collect fee, before any discount)
==> Savings = $32.05 - $25.78 = $6.27 (OpenTrolley wins round 1)

Round 2:
Kino's price: $28.85 after 10% discount for cardholders
OpenTrolley $24.54 after 5% discount on Tuesdays
==> Savings = $28.85 - $24.54 = $4.31 (OpenTrolley wins round 2)

Round 3:
Kino price: $25.65 after 20% disc for cardholders (during sale periods)
OpenTrolley's $24.54
==> Savings = $25.65 - $24.54 = $1.11 (OpenTrolley wins round 3)

Round 4:
Add transport cost, assuming:

• If I buy from Kino @ Bugis = Free (assuming I walk there after lunch).
• If I take a train from City Hall MRT (after work) to Dhoby Ghaut (Meridien hotel) to self-
  collect: $0.66 on-way, $1.32 two-way (to make your way back to City Hall to change to your
  West-bound train).
  

Kino's price: $25.65 after 20% disc for cardholders (during sale periods)
OpenTrolley's $24.54 + $1.32 = 25.86
==> Savings = $25.65 - $25.86 = -$0.21 (Kinokuniya wins round 4!!!)

OK, this may be counting pennies, but my point is that all things considered, the savings
ain't that great. :-)

The Second Life of Library Books

My colleagues & I attended the staff preview of the annual NLB Book Sale 2008 yesterday afternoon.

For some of us, it has become an annual ritual but I was hesitant about making yet another trip to Singapore Expo to rummage through piles of old books in hope of finding something worthy of my book shelves back home because:

· I have NOT read all the old books bought at previous Book Sales. In fact, they are gathering dust in a corner book shelf and I have wondered what I should do with them.

· NOTHING would have changed from the Book Sales of previous years.

o Same Expo convention hall
o Same book bins
o Same bunch of staff & volunteers
o Same selections of books
o Same shopping list for me
o Same payment method
o Same way home (by cab, due to the large number of impulse buys)
o Same feeling of post-shopping regrets.

But there I was, in a train full of backpackers, flight stewardesses and families with luggages en route to Changi Airport, on a hot Thursday afternoon, pondering if I was making that trip on an impulse.

The push factors for going, were:

The price was too good to overlook: $2 per book and $5 per bag of magazines.

It was an occasion to catch up with colleagues, especially those whom I have not met for some time.

There was a possibility of finding rare gems in the piles of books.

It would be an opportunity to ‘adopt’ some of these books and to give them a new lease of life in my home (even if they sit of my shelves instead of being disposed of in some other manner).

It was that last reason which convinced me to put aside my doubts for I am a collector and have never thrown away a single book of mine (barring school text books). I believe the books I choose deserve a second lease of life after their years of public service.

I arrived at Expo Hall 4A about 4.40pm, and I found my colleagues at the Young People’s English Non-Fiction section, sifting through the piles for History books for our boss, GT, who was unable to come due to a 5pm meeting. GT had asked us to look out for history books from the Dorling-Kindersley (DK) series.

As we browsed the book bins together, we chatted, joked, laughed and recommended books to each other. For instance, DL was the sole bachelor (involved in a long distance relationship) in our group and he was the butt of all mock recommendations revolving around topics like:
· Dating
· Grooming
· Unplanned pregnancies
· Reproduction
· Travel guides on China (where his girlfriend hails from)

On occasions where we split up to browse different sections, I would bump into someone from another department and we would chat briefly along the aisles.

By the time I finished shopping at 6pm – which was also the closing hour for the Book Sale preview – I had 15 books in my basket, half of which were Children’s fairy tales for me to read to my daughter, a couple of Young People’s non-ficition history titles and several Adult non-fiction titles on various topics.
The tab?

Fifteen used books: $30

Taxi fare home: $10

Giving 15 good books a second lease of life: priceless.

Zhuge Liang

With the recent excitement about John Woo's movie RED CLIFF, I bought the DVD version of the old ATV TV series ZHUGE LIANG, which starred actors like Adam Cheng as Zhuge Liang and Michelle (Mi Xue) as (*gasp*) Xiao Qiao.

As far as I can recall, most of the show was not faithful to the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms (imagine Zhuge Liang defeating Zhao Yun in a one-to-one duel !), so I watched from the middle of episode 27 onwards... which started with Liu Bei visiting Zhuge Liang three times in order to recruit him as Chief Strategist.

What I was looking out for was:

- how the various characters from ROTK were portrayed; and

- how the producer / director dealt with epic scenes on a low TV budget, vs. grander productions like the CCTV version.

As I saw it, the portrayals were not too bad and stayed quite true to form, but the battle scenes were few and of poor quality. Imagine under-sized helmets, bad choreography, and complete omissions (i.e. the generals would just report the results to the kings).

But I still liked the theme song of the ATV series and I found the Cantonese version on YouTube:

The voiceover at the beginning of the song turned out to be from a poem by Du Fu:

"八陣圖

功蓋三分國
名成八陣圖
江流石不轉
遺恨失吞吳 "

which translates into:

"The Eight Formations

His achievements were the greatest of that age of Three Kingdoms;
These Eight Formations made his name.
In five hundred years, the river has not moved his stones,
Or diminished his remorse at failing to swallow Wu. "

The author of the website which I quoted from elaborated that:

"The Eight Formations is thought to be a reference to sixty-four piles of large stones that, until they recently disappeared beneath the Three Gorges Reservoir, stood in shallow water near the shore of the Yangzi River southwest of Fengjie. They are said to be the Shu general Zhuge Liang’s depiction of the battle formation he would use in his decisive battle against Wu, another of the Three Kingdoms (220-265)."

Payslips and Financial IQ

I read Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money" recently and one of the 5 principles is 'How to improve your financial information' and that invariably included knowing how to read financial statements like balance sheets, income & expenditure statements, bank statements and so on.

Well, public servants like myself got our July payslips yesterday and there was a lot of buzz in the office because it was not only payday tomorrow, but also bonus period and word has it that the quantum is likely to be more compared to last year.

Imagine my surprise when I heard my colleagues asking each other aloud as they read their electronic payslips (privately, of course), "How do I calculate my performance bonus"? More specifically, what is its equivalent in the number of months compared to my basic monthly salary?

I told them that all it takes is to deduct the half month mid-year variable component (which almost all civil servants get) from the Variable Bonus. Divide that large amount by your basic gross salary (not nett salary), and you'll know how big or small a bonus you've got.

I was also shocked to hear that some of my colleagues do not even look at the components of their payslips. All they focused on was the nett salary which goes into their bank accounts.

Financial IQ and education starts from the payslip. I wish employers would organise such seminars or workshops for their employees. :-)

The Economics of Charity Drives

There's a recent trend among charity organisers to donate rice to charities based on fun activities, and these could range from online games which promises to donate X no. of grains of rice for every correct answer, to physical activities which pegs the no. of bowls of rice to a measurable output of some sporting events like running or skipping.

At the end of the day, every participant and organiser is happy to have contributed something worthwhile to charity, as the results are tallied, but does anyone pause to calculate the dollar value of such an act of charity?

As a mathematical exercise, let's assume that:

(1) a sponsor offers to pay for a bowl of uncooked rice for persons for every 10 units of output achieved by each participant. Remember, these could be anything from running 10 metres to climbing 10 steps to skipping 10 times.

(2) a total of 10,000 bowls was earned for charity at the end of the day.

I've looked up various websites that gives the relevant measurements and here are some estimates that 1 cup of uncooked rice (for 2 pax) weighs about 7 oz or 0.2kg.

==> Therefore, 1 bowl for 4 pax is approximately 2 cups or 14 oz or 0.4kg (i.e. double).

==> 10,000 bowls = 10,000 x 0.4kg = 4,000kg = 800 bags of rice @ 5kg


Now, the price of rice varies from supermart to supermart, so let's take 3 price labels and compute the dollar equivalent of "10,000 bowls of rice":

Brand A, 5kg @ $6.60 = $6.60 x 800 bags = $5,280

Brand B, 5kg @ $9.10 = $9.10 x 800 bags = $7,280

Brand C, 5kg @ $13.20 = $13.20 x 800 bags = $10,560


Assuming if the output achieved at the charity event is doubled, the figures above will also be doubled accordingly.


But what about the average dollar equivalent raised by each participant in the charity event?

Let's assume that we got 800 bags of Brand B rice @ $9.10 totalling $7,280.

If there were 100 participants, each person would have generated $72.80 or 8 bags of rice.
If there were 150 participants, each person would have generated $48.53 or 5.3 bags of rice.
If there were 200 participants, each person would have generated $36.40 or 4 bags of rice.


Once again, if we double the amount of rice earned for charity to 20,000 bowls, the figures above will also double, ceteris paribus.

Isn't that amazing?

Get Smart moments

I recently had some GET SMART moments at work.













Cone of Silence
This is how the C.O.S. works (or rather, didn't work) in the GET SMART TV series:




I had a meeting in one of the conference rooms and we couldn't get the laptops started. Someone decided to use the Crestron touch-screen console to contact the IT folks. After a long exchange of 'Hellos', we realised that even though we could all heard them on speaker mode, the technician at the other end could not hear us as our microphone was not activated!













Analysing chatter overheard by satellite
In GET SMART, Maxwell Smart has a talent for turning chatter overheard by satellite into 500-page reports, and he even analyses WHY 2 terrorists were having high-carbo muffins and decaff coffees from a short audio clip recorded in a cafe.

A few of us recently speculated why 2 chaps always seemed to buy gourmet coffee from different cafes ("Maybe they can't get along and don't want to bump into each other at the cafe") and why one of these guys always drinks the same brand as one of his female colleagues ("Maybe she buys it for him?").

On another day, we speculated why a particular manager used different colours in the email inbox to indicate who certain senders are, just like this:















For instance, yellow highlights were used for her boss, while green was used to highlight another senior person. And all the subordinates were highlighted in blue (and that filled up most of the inbox). One speculation went like this: "Maybe yellow (boss stands for lecherous or royalty... and that's how this person sees the boss; the green could connote that the other senior person is the object of envy, or is envious or gives green light to projects; and the blue smurfs just make this manager blue at work..."


Cue GET SMART theme: Dum dum dum.... DUM!