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Stop Taking Hotel Shampoo Home

Hotel Shampoo Bottles

I’m guessing you are like me in one aspect. Hotels that we stay at have all kinds of cute shampoo, lotion and body wash bottles. So of course, I have to bring back any I can. After all, if they are free, and if we are paying for them in the cost of the room, it seems foolish to leave them behind. I even worked out all kinds of ways to maximize the number of bottles they’d give me.

The hotels have done their part by adding more and types of liquids in the bottles. I’ve seen shampoo, conditioner, shampoo with conditioner, lotion, hand lotion, body lotion, hand wash, body wash, hair cleanser… After all, if we take them home, then they are great advertising for the hotels. So they are trying to outdo one another.

We travel a fair amount, some for work, some for vacation. So we pick up a lot of these bottles. Its getting to the point that we have them all over. In travel kits, in drawers, in the shower, the sink, in luggage… Each taking up a little space, each needing to be organized, cleaned and eventually recycled. When we moved house, I was astounded by how many we had, and the different places we’d stashed them.

Some of them were more than 10 years old. Many of them, particularly the lotion bottles were “past their prime…” And they are not what I want. I would never spend money at a store to get the shampoo / lotion / conditioner I got in a hotel.

It got me to thinking. These little hotel bottles are not worth it. Anything we have  at home, simply by sitting there is costing us time and money. We have to find a place to store them, use them up, recycle them when they are empty. Its simply not worth it. It doesn’t matter that they are free.

And it also got me thinking about the environment. I have no idea how many millions of these little bottles there are plugging up the planet, but it could not be good. It takes energy and resources to make each little bottle, pack them, ship them, take them back home and finally recycle them. So reducing the amount in use is good, environmentally.

Its up to us, the hotel patrons. The hotels are going to keep replenishing the bottles every time we use them. They can’t afford not to. So here is what I am going to do. I will carry my own shampoo and conditioner, you know, the one that I like, and use those.

And stop bringing back stuff I don’t really like. Its simply not worth it.

Posted in Environment, Free Stuff, Shipping.

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By admin – April 29, 2012

Gandhi would have been proud

On January 29, 2010, a fundamentalist church picketed Gunn High School in Palo Alto. They told the children that the reason that there had been a number of highly publicized suicide among Gunn High children was because the children had bad parents, and the community supported homosexuals.

The church (to its credit, I suppose) got the necessary permissions to picket the school ahead of time. So the kids knew beforehand that they would be picketed. In a response that was amazing and admirable, the kids staged a counter protest. I was so moved by their reaction that I sent this letter to the editors:

Community proud of Gunn students

I was filled with admiration as I read your report (Page 1A, Jan. 30) on the response of the Gunn High students to the demonstration by the Westboro Baptist Church. They were astoundingly mature and wise. They make me proud and happy to live in the Bay Area.

Jan. 30 was the day that Gandhi was assassinated. He would have been proud. They should be proud. Their parents should be proud. Their community is proud.

Anant Mithal
San Jose

My kids’ godmother has a quote from Gandhi on her wall

I like your Christ. I don’t like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.


Posted in Gandhi, History, Peaceful Protests.

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By kartik – March 1, 2010

Gandhi’s Last Words

Gandhi Samadhi: The spot where Gandhi was cremated.

I have a theory that ever since his assasination in 1948, the world has misunderstood the meaning of the words Gandhi said as he died. Gandhi said “Hai Ram” as he fell. The words resonated throughout India, and have become etched into India’s fabric. They are encrusted on his ‘samadhi’. These two words by themselves can evoke the events and emotions of that day.

Yet I think we misunderstood what he meant. Here is why:

Martin Luther King Day falls in the month of January. In my kids’ school, they are asked to write a report about a humanitarian. They get to pick among people like MLK, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Ceaser Chavez and Clara Barton. My grandmother and grandaunt were Gandhi’s “camp followers”, so when my daughter, like her brother before her, picked Gandhi to write about, I was delighted. As it happens, Gandhi was killed on the 30th of January, 1948.

We dug around the web and read some of the books we had lying around the house, and finally we watched the movie “Gandhi.” The children’s books about Gandhi that are written in India are really terrible. They are full of facts. I suspect they are written by PhDs who work in dusty government offices who see the books as a way of getting a promotion. We really need children’s books about Gandhi that are written for children. The interesting thing about Gandhi is that we know a lot about him because he wrote a lot about himself.

For her presentation, my daughter picked out things that a child would identify with. Gandhi was afraid of many things, the dark, snakes and burglars. My daughter might be afraid of them too. Gandhi’s family had a maid, who told him that the way to overcome fear was to invoke the name of the god Ram. Gandhi latched onto this and said the name to himself many times. As he faced challenging situations throughout his life, he continued to rely on this simple homily to give him courage.

Another thing that my daughter picked up on was that Gandhi was very quick witted and many of the things he said were quite funny. For example, when he went to Champaran in Bihar, a large crowd met him. A small group of policemen pushed their way through the crowd and stopped him. Their officer told Gandhi that he was not wanted there. Gandhi gestured to the crowd and said “They seem to want me.”

The final thing my daughter picked out was that Gandhi was afraid of death. He said that even though he was afraid of dying, he would if he had to.

A few days before Gandhi was assassinated, there was another attempt at his life. A bomb was detonated close to where he was but he was uninjured. A few days later, the final assassination attempt succeeded. When he was shot at point blank range, he said “Hai Ram” and collapsed. He probably died in seconds. For years we have assumed that this was something like “oh no”. In the movie “Gandhi”, Attenborough translates this to “Oh God!”

After helping my daughter with her report, I came to a different conclusion. Gandhi knew that people were trying to kill him because of the bomb attack. He was very quick witted, very intelligent, and in the split seconds that the bullets hit him, he knew he was going to die. He was afraid, and he retreated to his homily from childhood, and called out to Rama.

Posted in History.

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By kartik – February 28, 2010

How Much Does Globalization Ruin the Environment?

Today’s ABC news webcast interviewed an LA Times reporter who talked about the damage that is being caused to the world’s oceans. Something that caught my attention was that shipping was responsible for more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

It made me think about all the stuff that the US imports from China (and elsewhere). How much additional environmental damage we cause simply by shipping the goods here. The most environmentally friendly production is probably the stuff that is produced close to where it is consumed.

When we were buying granite for our countertops, we got this nice black granite with flecks of silver (probably mica) that looks really nice. The woman who sold it to us told us that the mountain in China that it came from is nearly mined out. I had visions of hollowed out mountainsides. Because those mountainsides are so far away, they seem almost unreal. If the devastation was close by, we’d probably care more.

When I was going to school at the University of Oregon, I made many trips to the countryside. It is amazingly beautiful. I liked to wander around, and occasionally took a wrong turn. On a couple of these unintended journeys, I suddenly was confronted by clear cutting: where the lumber companies had cut everything down. It was horrifying, and reminded me most of all of someone with a head wound. When someone has a head wound, doctors shave the hair around the wound. In a day or two, hair grows back through the wound causing a matted, grisly, bloody mess. All around the wound is normal hair. Clearcut is kinda like that…

A couple of years back, my family and I went to the Malakoff Diggins State Park. Its the site of California’s largest “hydraulic mine.” Fancy name for a mining technique where the miners (’49ers, — gold miners) used enormous water cannons to blast entire hillsides away. The cannons shot out 5-7000 gallons per minute! The devastation was amazing. Interestingly, the practice was outlawed not because of the damage caused to the mine itself, but because of the damage caused to downstream communities. Just goes to show that if bad things don’t happen in our own back yards, we care less about them.

The park service has a link to a panoramic view off their website. Its a bit clearer in this picture I took thats on the left. I couldn’t figure out whether the erosion you see is flooding caused by the mining or the water cannons. It was mind boggling that entire hillsides could be consumed.

In the song “Clementine“, which is about a “miner, 49er” there is a line about the girl falling “into the foaming brine.” I wondered if the foaming brine was the water they blasted the hillside with.

In addition to the erosion caused by the water, chemicals were used to get the gold out of the soil. And if I remember correctly, a lot of mercury was used…

So, back to what got this started: if we rely on goods produced far away, we care less about how they are produced. And shipping them to us exacts a toll on the environment…

Posted in Environment, imports, Mining, Shipping.

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By kartik – February 14, 2008

Lets start a new tradition: Wii instead of football after Thanksgiving Dinner

This Thanksgiving was different for us. Instead of lying around in supine lumps watching football, all the adults and all the kids played games on the Wii.

After that huge meal, it felt very good to get up and do something active. We all took turns playing in different combinations, parents mixed up with kids, men and women on the same teams, on different teams.

I don’t recall a more raucous Thanksgiving. I think this was the most fun anyone us has had at Thanksgiving in a long time. And oh yes, the food was great too!

Posted in Thanksgiving traditions.

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By kartik – November 23, 2007

Give Chinese Workers the Same Rights as US Workers

I was reading an article in the San Jose Mercury News about how Chinese workers are getting poisoned by the goods that they are making for customers in the US. In the last couple of days the California State Attorney General decided to sue companies like Mattel and Toys ‘R Us for selling tainted toys in the US. I agree with the AG about the suit, but don’t see it solving the problem.

I even heard that Japan sends inspectors to China to check goods before they leave China, and substandard goods don’t make it into Japan. But that is still not enough.

I don’t want to be responsible for workers in China falling sick so that my kids can have toys and I can have sneakers. I think the way to deal with this is to have all goods that are manfuactured in China (or any other country) manufactured with the same (or better) standards as well as worker safety regulations that are applied to workers in the US.

This will lead to a number of things. First, employers will have to pay better wages and benefits to workers in China, which will level the playing field for workers in the US. It seems sort of backwards that the US should loose manufacturing jobs in part because we care about the health of workers in the US.

Second, hopefully we’ll feel less guilt about what US consumer goods are doing to the workers in countries like China.

Finally, maybe increasing the level of worker safety will reduce the amount of bad products that get into the US.

Posted in Lead, Poison, US workforce, Workers Rights.

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By kartik – November 21, 2007

Mazda has a better UI than Toyota

We’ve got two cars. A Toyota and a Mazda. We bought the Mazda because at the time the Toyota we wanted was going for a premium. So we paid less than asking for the Mazda. The Toyota is mechanically the better car. They’ve got about the same number of miles on them and the Toyota is still ‘taught’ while the Mazda has loosened up somewhat.

But the Mazda has a better user interface (UI) than the Toyota. Two examples:

The Toyota has no indicator on its radio about what the volume is. The Mazda has an LCD bar that extends from min to max, indicating a midpoint. Its helped me know that while driving on the freeway (lots of wind and road noise), I’ve got the stereo cranked way up. On the Toyota, I don’t have any idea how loud I’m listening to the stereo.

The two companies also designed their keyless entry systems differently. On the Toyota, if you press the lock button on the remote, the car beeps once. If you press the unlock key, it beeps twice. This happens regardless of whether the car was already locked or unlocked.

So if your car was unlocked and you press the lock button, it beeps once. If your car was locked and you press the lock button it beeps once. i.e. you have no way of knowing what the state of the car was before the lock key was pressed. (If a door is ajar and you press lock, the car makes a sound like its being strangled, but that’s another story).

The Mazda changes its behavior depending on the prior state of the doors. If the car was unlocked, it locks the doors then flashes the lights once. If the car was locked, it does nothing. But if you press the lock key a second time, it honks the horn, as if to say (I HEARD you.) Its very reassuring. Press the key twice, and you get no lights flashing, but a HONK, and you know that the car was already locked, you’re just being obsessive.

So, which car would I buy again? Probably the Toyota because of its mechanical soundness. And wish it would have a UI as friendly as the Mazda’s…

Posted in UI Design.

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By kartik – June 19, 2007

Goodie Bags & Cheap Toys: Ruining Children’s minds

I hate goodie bags. There I’ve said it. I also hate kids meals and the general glut of toys that my kids have. For every toy I had growing up, they must have 10. I think this overabundance of toys is ruining my kids’ imaginations, and the imaginations of children all over the world.

My kids have too many toys. They have too many stuffed animals (I had one which I cherished. One of my kids has not one, but three different stuffed leopards. To say nothing about dogs, rabbits, parrots and even the odd bear. They each have about 5 construction kits of different kinds. Lego, lego and more lego. Magnets, Lincoln Logs… Thanks to the tons of cheap goods we get from China, everyone can afford to give their kids toys. Everyone can also afford to give all their friends’ and relatives’ kids toys. And not cheap toys either, but large, sophisticated toys. My kids have between them not one, but 5 electronic toys that teach them how to spell.

And those are the ‘better’ toys. Kids meals. If I haven’t already said that I hate the toys in kids meals, then I’m saying it now. My kids eat the kids meals only for the toy. Great marketing, of course. Recently my wife and I decided that the kids can order the kids meals, but not the toy. So one of my kids refused to eat. Which pretty much proves that its not about the food, its about the toy.

Which brings me to my favourite bug bear: Goodie bags. I think I’m actually afraid of goodie bags and how they make my kids behave. A short while back, we were at a friend’s house attending the first birth of their son. He was utterly adorable, but eventually we had to leave. It didn’t look like goodie bags were on the agenda which was a releif. The couple was not from the US, and I was hoping that they hadn’t heard about the goodie bag custom. As we were heading out the door, I was utterly mortified when my daughter said she had to talk to the hostess. I was delighted that she might want to thank the hostess for a very nice party. Boy was I wrong. She said “I didn’t get a goodie bag.” I was embarassed beyond belief. Fortunately for all, there was in fact a goodie bag, and I was delighted that it contained only one toy, a plastic saxaphone.

We’ve even had conversations where we tell them that we are going to a party, and they ask if they’ll get a goodie bag. We explain that the purpose of the party is not the goodie bag, but to enjoy time with friends, and of course that makes no sense to them…

Most of the goodie bags we get are full of cheap toys. I should know, I’ve helped my wife with so many of them… Oh, and candy, which somehow rubs salt into the wound. My kids seem to have no trouble remembering each toy they got, and never remembering to put them away. So we always have toys underfoot.

And the goodie bags seem to have gone beyond just birthday parties to any event where kids gather. My son goes to afterschool care at the Y, and they had an end of year party. Where all the kids attending (including the ones who don’t go to the Y) came back with a goodie bag.

So we have so many toys, there is no place to put them. We have endless battles about putting toys away. I’m sure other parents do the same thing. We even said that if toys weren’t put away, they’d get banished to the garage. It didn’t have much effect: they just switched to other toys. Finally, in frustration, I filled 4 large boxes with toys and stacked them in the garage. My kids complained for a while. Its now months later, and they are doing fine without the toys. Which proves something…

My final gripe is that I think that having too many toys is bad for my kids’ brains. When I was growing up, when we finished playing with toys the way they were designed to play, we switched to what I call inventive play. We made things up, and we made the toys do things they weren’t designed to do. For instance, my son using his magnet set to try and create a train out of his toy cars. But today more often than not, when a kid gets bored with one toy, she simply switches to another. No invention. No practice…

So we’ve stopped buying our kids toys. We are thinking more in terms of one really ‘good’ toy rather than lots of cheap toys.

What do you do with your kids?

Posted in Uncategorized.

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By kartik – June 19, 2007

Reflections… ?

Reflections…

Posted in Uncategorized.

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By kartik – January 22, 2005

Offshoring — why the powers that be won’t stop the dollar’s decline

I first started this post on January 10, 2005. At the time the dollar was in decline, George W. Bush was president, and there was much concern in the country about the decline of the dollar.

The concern was the the US appeared to be loosing its “leadership position” and the weaker dollar was making oil and other imports more expensive. There were calls to the administration to take steps to make the dollar stronger. This is very relevant today, when the proposed Quantitaive Easing 2 (a.k.a QE2) will likely have the effect of making the dollar weaker. The US is also pressuring China to revalue the Yuan. The US claims that the Chinese government “pegs” the value of the Chinese currency to the dollar, making Chinese goods artificially cheap in the US, and US goods expensive in China.

Back in 2005, I thought through the implications of a weaker dollar and wondered whether the administration would in fact do anything to make the dollar stronger. For example, one thing could be to increase the inerest rates that the Fed charges. But when I thought it through, I decided that most likely the administration would do nothing to strengthen the dollar.

A weak dollar reduces outsourcing, oil consumption and imports. A weaker dollar also helps increase exports, so the combination of fewer imports and more exports helps with the trade deficit. This is how it goes:

Outsourcing: The company I worked for at the time was a US based company with global operations. Department’s budgets were allocated in dollars. As the dollar dropped against currencies like the Euro and the Rupee, employees overseas became more expensive. So a falling dollar discourages  US companies from offshoring jobs. At the same time it can encourage foreign companies to set up shop in the US. At the time I heard of doctors’ groups in India getting radiologists in the US to analyze X-rays. X-rays were sent to them electronically, and they electronically filed reports for doctors in India.

Oil Consumption: One of the things in the news in 2005 was rising gas prices. The price of crude oil is measured in US dollars. As the US$ fell, the price of crude went up. This in turn pushed up gas prices. Which in turn made people drive less, and think of getting more fuel efficient cars.

Trade Deficit: Finally, all those cute Barbie dolls and other stuff we buy from abroad were getting more expensive. At the same time US exports (cars, planes, heavy machinery, corn, soy etc.,) were getting cheaper in those other countries. This helped us export more, while at the same time we bought less from abroad. Very good for reducing the trade deficit.

Given all these effects, I couldn’t see the US government doing anything to strengthen the dollar. Now we are back where we were 5 years ago. and with QE2, the Fed is being accused of intentionally weakening the dollar to gain an economic advantage over other countries, something they deny.

Posted in China, Economics.

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By kartik – January 10, 2005