I've had quite an interesting few weeks. I took some time off to go to Southeast Asia for a wedding at an invitation from one of our investors (not going to say no there...).San Francisco through Tokyo to Bali and back. It's impossible to go direct, hell I couldn't afford it anyway, so I rounded out approximately 4.5 days 35,000 feet in the air all said and done. That's a lot of self-reflection time. I read a great deal and gave myself a mental break from Laborfair. I am a firm believer in balance, although I get there infrequently. Work, play, rest, work, play, rest. Yeah, right, well it's aspirational.
While on the airplane, I got my hands on Newsweek's recent Luxury Issue, outlining profiles of products, services and anecdotes from the lifestyles of the super rich. Want to be completely blown away? Read this article Paying for a Chance To Suffer in Silence . I kid you not. I've been busy, caught up in my own world, but seriously, are people out of their minds--deprivation is the new idea of a holiday? Sounds a bit wasteful and masochistic to me. Why would you want to pay $500 a night to sleep in an absolutely freezing hotel on a bed made of snow and ice? Isn't there a better use of your time than making yourself miserable just because you can?
Want an international adventure vacation minus all creature comforts? How about a do-gooder vacation where you help others, get a tan, and change your perception of the world and your fellow man in the process...this seems like a cool alternative to 800 calories a day and no sleep allowed boot camp... International Volunteer Community Service. Work for Habitat for Humanity in Soweto or help farmers in Central America install wind or solar powered irrigation pumps in their fields, eat local food while your sweet tourist blood is dinner for local mosquitoes, and sweat every modern day toxin out of your system. That's a vacation! Heck,it's deprivation you can feel good about. It costs a lot less too--it's even tax deductible.
In all fairness, I'm all about a nice hotel with high thread count sheets, fruity drinks and a massage on the beach once in a grand while, but I draw the line at paying for deprivation. There's a lot of that to go around, just read the news. We're in this together, all of us.
Ok, I'm done, this has absolutely nothing to do with Laborfair.com and finding housecleaners, childcare workers, local plumbers or electricians, but it is emblematic of this age of extremes. This just threw me.
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