by Peter H Frank | Nov 3, 2015 | Culture, How I Know I'm Not in New York, Life in Romania |
Source: http://www.evz.ro/constanta-lumanari-in-memoria-victimelor-tragediei-din-clubul-colectiv.html
“The March”
“Remus, hello! Over here!”
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Oh, my friend, it’s been a terrible few days. Just terrible.”
“Yes, I know. It’s unbelievably sad. You were at the march on Sunday?”
“Of course. Something had to be done. And thank god, 12000 of us showed up to show our solidarity.”
“What an incredible tragedy.”
“Horrible. You know, we just can’t sit by anymore and let this kind of thing keep happening. That’s why we marched. To do something. Something real. Something with impact. Something that will change things. To tell people we won’t tolerate this.”
“I hope so. This was a terrible …”
“People should not be able to get away with this.”
“I agree. The owners of these clubs …”
“I don’t mean just the owners. I mean the people who are responsible for this. The people in charge. In charge of society. Who are supposed to make things better. The people who let this happen.”
“Like the inspectors …”
“I mean the politicians. I mean the government agencies whose job it is to protect us and enforce the laws and make sure we are safe.”
“Yes.”
“You know, some of these victims were so young.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not fair. And there are people who were elected and appointed and are being paid a lot of money to ensure young people like these have a future.”
“Yes.”
“We pay these politicians to keep people safe. To protect them. To protect them from others. To protect them from themselves.”
“Yes.”
“And make sure they have a chance to live long and happy lives.”
“I know.”
“And be productive and be part of society. These were beautiful people. Innocent. And our neighbors and fellow Romanians. And there are people whose job it is to make sure these young people don’t get hurt and that they have a future. They are the ones who failed.”
“Yes. And you know, the older you get, the sadder it feels. When you reach my age, you realize more than ever that so many were really still children.”
“Yes. That’s right. Children. And these politicians are the ones to blame. They are the ones who need to go to jail. They have failed in their responsibilities. It’s criminal. They need to start enforcing the laws and making sure that these young children have a future. The police need to do a better job. The inspectors need to do a better job. The people we elect need to do a better job.”
“I agree. And you protested all that when you marched.”
“Well, no. It wasn’t the right time. We’ll do that later. But trust me, that’s what we were thinking. We need to stop this. And we mean it this time.”
“I hope so.”
“Really, it’s so painful. I feel so helpless. We all felt helpless. There’s nothing we can do to bring those people back. The tragedy is over and it should never have occurred. People need to care more and stop looking away. Somebody should have stopped this tragedy before it happened.”
“I agree.”
“Everyone deserves a chance to live without their lives always in danger. Everyone deserves to be protected. We need to force people in charge here to start doing their jobs. It was such a tragedy for those families and friends. It is such a tragedy for this country. To see lives destroyed like this is such a waste, such a terrible waste. You know, the real tragedy for this country is all the wasted potential these young people had. Don’t they realize we are all in this together? It’s not just the powerful and rich who matter. We are one society and everyone should be cared for. The real guilty people are those who could have stopped this.”
“I completely agree. There really is no excuse for not protecting this country’s children.”
“None at all. And we’re going to stop this.”
“Like those poor kids who died in that fire.”
“Absolutely. ”
“And the malnourished children who are living in villages.”
“It’s unforgivable.”
“And those kids on the street I see every day, not going to school and having no future.”
“Exactly.”
“So you’ll be going to that march?”
“What march?”
by Peter H Frank | Oct 30, 2015 | Business |
Earlier this month, I gave a lecture on critical thinking to an association of Hungarian economists in Targu Mures. At the end of the conversation, I was asked two questions: what was my first impression of business in Romania when I arrived here six years ago? And, what advice do I have for a young person looking to start a business?
As occurs all too frequently, it was not until after I gave my answers and sat down that I realized I wished I had answered them differently. After only a few minutes of reflection did I see how the two answers were perfectly related and how important they both are now as much as ever. Here is how I wish I had answered:
My first impression upon coming to Romania was of a reality that unfortunately remains as true today as when I arrived. Actually, I noticed it even before I arrived. After changing planes in Italy, I was on a Tarom flight to Bucharest looking through the in-flight magazine when I saw an advertisement for a Bancpost-American Express-Tarom credit card.
Having spent 12 years at the world’s largest credit card issuer and the pioneer of affinity/cobranded cards (and then several years after that teaching and writing on the topic), I immediately shook my head and saw what a financial failure that product was likely to be. I knew firsthand that this type of three-branded arrangement existed in other places, but replicating what you see from outside – without understanding the very challenging particulars that lay beneath – was a recipe for disaster. And from what I was reading, this was not going to work.
It was not until after I landed and began to live here that I found more and more examples of exactly this syndrome, whether in banking, in media, at retailers, in restaurants, or even inside American-inspired bars and cafes. Yes, the veneer looked the same – the products and logos and menus and concepts – sometimes, in fact, they were even more American than they were in America.
But it didn’t take long to discover that the product and messaging and service and flavors were but superficial in appearance and misunderstood. Indeed, there was generally a lack of any deeper understanding of the structure and of the strategy within the businesses and products that are required for success.
Six years later, unfortunately, I see little improvement. There still remain too many examples of this fundamentally wrong approach. And too many companies, from banks to newspapers to retailers to restaurants, still fail to understand. Most of them, especially Bucharest newspapers, seem to have no concept as to why they’re in business.
As I know the credit card and loyalty businesses rather well, let me give you a few examples I observe from that sector. In the several years after my introduction to that Tarom credit card (which, by the way, has moved to another bank), I came across the BCR Zambet card, a confused and expensive product that I’ve criticized before for not knowing what it was or why it existed. And after obtaining the bank’s internal presentation some time later, I could see the confusion. There were lots of superficial benefits, but little recognition of the challenges.
Then I noticed Raiffeisen’s cobranded SMURD MasterCard, which I confess led to a sad laugh. The demographics might be good, but clearly the basics of card affinity are not well understood. And then there’s a Steaua card – again, a good idea in other places, but a seriously dubious product here.
Or look at the other big banks and the hundreds of things that were copied and brought here: a credit card for doctors, for small businesses, for entrepreneurs, for students, for shoppers. Discount cards. No-interest borrowing. Points and rewards. Elaborate cash-backs. In each case, I guess, someone saw them in other countries, or read about them somewhere.
But also in each case I can tell you it doesn’t take long to see that too much is wrong – from ineffective benefits to badly constructed messaging to misconceived positioning to card designs without purpose to descriptions intended more for bankers than consumers – overall creating dozens of different products either virtually indistinguishable from each other or giving potential customers no good reason to want them.
And while I don’t know their profitability, these card programs must be attractive to issuers. Some banks are now willing to effectively pay you 100 lei to sign up or some other amount if you bring them your friends. But that’s not likely to work either as short-term acquisition does not necessarily translate to long-term utilization – not with the customer marketing that you find here at the banks.
In fact, of all the bonus and loyalty cards being offered here (whether from banks or any of the retailers), not one that I’ve seen is truly conceived and structured as anything but a product – not a program – and loyalty, to succeed, is not a product to be sold. No. Paying cash for new customers is not a way to build loyalty.
The fact is these could be tremendously successful if done correctly in this market. But there is not a bank or retailer here that seems to fully understand how to correctly position these loyalty, advantage, bonus points, or affinity programs – whatever you want to call them. Instead, it appears they have merely designed card products to look the way they think they should and they are probably wondering why none of them succeed as well as they do in other places.
In other words, what I found when I got here – and still find all too often – is that Romania has businesses that do everything done elsewhere. But all too often, they throw products on the shelves and compete mostly with price and waste a lot of money on new customer acquisition. And when all is said and done, it appears they lack the essential understanding of why these products exist or where they’re headed in the future.
One of the more common excuses I hear is that this or that product was already tried and it didn’t work. Or times have changed and the product won’t sell. Or it’s only been 20 years – you have to give it more time. What this typically means is the person has failed to understand. My guess is they did try that product as they saw it someplace else with the attitude that “I’m a smart person, I can see how it’s done.” But the truth is, they cannot. They never tried the product the way it actually exists someplace else. So they never tried the product the way it needs to succeed.
And that, very simply, takes me to the answer to the second question I was asked.
What advice do I have for young people and entrepreneurs looking to launch a new business? It sounds so obvious, yet it’s so often overlooked. Understand your business – better than anyone. Because once you truly understand what goes into a successful product and then design it accordingly, what you’ll be offering is precisely what your customer wants – not only what you’ve seen without understanding from a distance.
Your business does nothing without customers. And the best type of customers are the ones who like you. Customers who value you. Customers who like doing business with you no matter your industry or the flavor of your product.
And how do you create that? Through the design of your products, the delivery of your services, the internal procedures of your business, and the treatment of your employees. Everything aligned to satisfy your customers.
Whether you are a bank or a newspaper or a shop or a neighborhood restaurant, it’s not enough to offer your product and then pay for new customers. You must inspire your employees, create a business that others enjoy and be a good neighbor (whether you’re local or on the web). Your customers will feel it and the profits will come.
And never forget that it all starts with you.
Yes, the opportunities are out there. Others’ lack of understanding is like a gift made for you.
That’s how I wish I had answered those questions.
by Peter H Frank | Sep 9, 2015 | Business, Life in Romania, Literature |
In business and in life, it’s the small things we take for granted that generally cause our mistakes. After all, you might wonder, what’s so hard about putting a book on a shelf?
Many years ago, I was driving through the suburbs of Dallas on a quiet weekend when I saw a big sign announcing a book sale under a large white tent in a parking lot. It was a fundraiser of some sort and they had rows and rows and rows of books that were no longer wanted from some library or school or someplace else I don’t remember.
![Georg Brandes (1842-1927) [Source: http://denmark.dk/en/meet-the-danes/great-danes/scientists/georg-brandes/]](https://peterhfrank.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Georg_Brandes_by_Szacinski580.jpg)
Georg Brandes (1842-1927)
entury who had been an acquaintance of Ibsen and probably most of the Scandinavian and German intellectuals of the time. He had also corresponded with Nietzsche and introduced his philosophy to much of Europe. In fact, Brandes was probably the first guy who suggested to Nietzsche that he become familiar with someone named Soren Kierkegaard. He was also the person to whom Nietzsche wrote one of the greatest letters of all time. One of the so-called “madness letters” that Nietzsche composed in Turin during a brief period in early January 1889 and never mailed, the unstamped letter to Brandes said:
“To the friend Georg,
“When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the difficulty now is to get rid of me…
[Signed] The Crucified.”
So how did this treasure, apparently the first English edition, sit there unnoticed and sell for just a few dollars? Because someone (who might want to try reading their own books a bit more) had placed this fine edition in the section about Education. That’s right. Where else would you put a book titled What Nietzsche Taught?
Now before I go on, let me absolutely assure you that I’m not suggesting any parallels between Friedrich Nietzsche and me. He had a lot more hair. And, I’m told, he successfully completed his “Introduction to German” course. But that said, not since that day in Dallas have I noticed a book so misplaced, so oddly juxtaposed with unrelated subjects, until recently when I saw my own published scribblings about critical thinking in business in a Carturesti bookstore placed between a book on how to quit smoking and one by the Dalai Lama. That’s right. Snuggled together. Like best friends hanging out with no place to go.
The Myth of the Eternal Return
I’m not sure about you, but when I think about me (or my writing), only seldom does the Dalai Lama come to mind (though it does frequently make me want to quit quit smoking). In fact, I would guess that the Dalai Lama (Note to Editor: is he known as just Lama on second reference?) and I have about as much in common as Nietzsche and I. Yes, we each have written a few things. But I would hardly expect that single similarity to warrant our being put on the same shelf – or even in the same store.
Frog and Toad Together
You can’t really blame the bookstores and I’m not complaining. I’m just glad my book exists. But I do feel sorry for the retailers and their clerks who are confronted by the dozens of books that are published here every single day. Who has time to sort them all out? Just because you sell them doesn’t mean you read them. (I mean, I’ve served Sautéed Cerveaux and I’ll be damned if I’d eat one.)
some other book
So why don’t publishers here bother telling anyone what their books are about? For the same reason, I suppose, employees in restaurants and the places we shop are not taught by their managers to say “Hello,” “I’ll be right there,” and “Ok, I’m back from my nap. Did any of you want another drink?” I guess they take for granted that we know that’s what they’re thinking. Understand, it’s not just my book and it’s not just one publisher that believes it unnecessary to tell others the secret topic that’s hidden within their pages. Maybe they just take for granted that the bookstores will figure it out. They think it’s the other guy’s job. Perhaps they do this because they don’t like them. I’m told publishers here don’t bother communicating much with bookstores – except when they try unsuccessfully to get paid. But that’s the great thing about print, whether selling or writing. You don’t actually have to talk to anyone.
Now for those of you who don’t read English, let me tell you that it’s almost impossible to find a book printed in English, whether in the UK or the US, that doesn’t somewhere on the jacket or flaps list the category of the subject of what’s written inside. Even the Bible, I suspect, has “Religion” printed somewhere on the back. (Yes, ok, some might suggest “Fiction,” but that’s the subject for someone else’s completely different blog.)
Indeed, I’m told that somewhere between 90 and 120 percent of all books published here are imported and translated from English. So the obvious question is: why not import this idea from the cover as well?
An Anxious Age
So this little curiosity got me paying attention. And what fun it has been. There is the Dictionary of Sociology directly under a sign for Economics. The autobiography of Jung is in Philosophy with Kant and Aristotle while the other books by Jung are five feet away in the Psychology section. In Sociology, of course, are put all of the books no one knows where else to put them (sort of what happens in the real world also). I had the feeling that if I kept looking, I’d probably find Who Moved My Cheese? in the Cooking section. Or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance under Do-It-Yourself. Maybe The Magic Mountain in Tourism with other books about Disneyland.
?
Instead, though, I concentrated on my book. (After all, if I don’t, who will?) That book I’ve found in Practical Psychology. Sometimes Self-Help. Other times safely placed under a section dedicated to the publisher. For a while it was placed generally in New Books. Other times, it’s on some table that’s completely unmarked. And my favorite is when the manager says they have it, but no one knows where.
The sad fact is that I originally worried I would have to convince people my book was not only about business. Now I find I need to convince them it is.
Finally, though, I did find it in the Business section. Oddly, it was also at a Carturesti, but a different one in town. This time, it was placed between Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and James Carville and Paul Begala’s book titled Pupa-I In Bot Si Papa-I Tot. Manual De Marketing Politic (which means something like Kiss His Mouth And Eat All Of Him. A Manual Of Political Marketing).
What?!?!! On second thought, nevermind. Could you please put it back next to my friend, Mr. Lama?
by Peter H Frank | Aug 24, 2015 | Culture, Life in Romania |
Several months ago, I came across something in Bucharest that was so unexpected and so
much fun that I was thinking to write a blog post about it. Until, that is, after a bit of effort, I was able to convince myself no one would find it interesting. So I eagerly and happily relieved myself of the chore.
Then several weeks later came an article in The Guardian titled “The secret history of 19th century cyclists” and, well, I decided maybe I was wrong. (Never had I realized the bicycle was such an important feminist tool.)
Still, I let it go. No one would know. Then The New York Times crept up with a story last month about the history of bicycling and the fact that some of its history was being enshrined in an ex
hibit at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It seems the great American suffragette Susan B. Anthony (of the disastrous one-dollar-coin fame) once said cycling did more than anything else to emancipate women. (Apparently it was related to giving women the freedom to shop more quickly, or something like that.)
So, it seems, the world wouldn’t leave my laziness alone.
Maria Mihăescu, nicknamed Miţa Biciclista, pictured here in an undated photo from the late 1890s or early 20th century.
But that’s not why I’m finishing this post. No. Not really. I’m finishing it because I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere else in the world that would have placed a plaque on an old house in the middle of a city for a woman who accomplished what this one did. And I thought you should know.
The woman I refer to is Maria Mihăescu, otherwise known as Miţa Biciclista. Now, for you Romanians out there, I know I run the risk of prompting a laugh, announcing I’ve just discovered something like coal in Newcastle. But to you non-Romanians (and you know who you are), you too might find this as interesting as I. (And as a bonus for persevering, I’ll teach you a sweet little nursery rhyme at the end that you can sing to your kids.)
Now, I don’t want to boast, but I’ve lived in Bucharest for six years and I’ve visited maybe three museums already. Well, two, if you don’t count the Museum of Peasants where I only go to the gift shop. (I’m told the rest of the place is very nice.) I walk a couple miles most days and more than twice I have stopped to know where I am. The fact is I still marvel at everything, even though I stop to read nothing. To be very honest, I’ve probably read just a handful of plaques the entire time I’ve lived here. You know the ones I mean – those square engraved stones on the front of houses that announce for history that “the guy who lived here for three weeks in 1862 was rich and a dentist.” (See one 
pictured nearby. He was apparently a “prominent personality” when he didn’t have a flashlight up your nose.)
The fountain, outside her front door.
But back to my story. So there I was, ridiculously early for a meeting on a hot afternoon in a neighborhood in Bucharest that I thought I knew well. To kill some time, I needed to wander. A lot. Slowly. (Did you know there’s a water fountain stuck right in the sidewalk at the corner of Strada Biserica Amzei and Strada General Christian Tell? Neither did I.) And, lo and behold, I found myself a plaque.
“Miţa,” it said, “the Cy
clist House.”
At first, I thought this was only slightly interesting. They made bicycles here, or maybe Miţa, (pronounced: meetza) whoever that was, had been in the circus. But then I reached the end of the sentence: “…the first woman to ride a bicycle in Bucharest.”
The plaque.
Well, well. How about that? People back then sure had a lot of time on their hands, I figured. They must have been sitting outside their homes every evening waiting for someone to go by, just like now when you get eyeballed by those lines of friendly stone-faced citizens in all of those villages that you find yourself crawling through so you don’t get a ticket as everyone who lives there is sitting on wooden benches out by the road so they can stare at the strangers and feed the mosquitoes.
Yes, that must be what happened: In the sleepy streets of Bucharest one evening before 1900, all of a sudden, one old guy says to another: “Was that a woman who just rode by on a bicycle? By golly, I reckon that was the first woman in this great metropolis who ever sat on one of those contraptions.”
So, there you go. Within days, it was confirmed, and hurrays and huzzas were shouted all around. And this little woman from Dițești was honored and feted for finally having the gumption to give the two-wheeler a death-defying go.
And if you, too, just now, thought anything similar, then you, too, would be so far from right, you wouldn’t even know it was out there.
The house.
Because this sweet Miţa Biciclista was not that kind of sweet little woman. How to put this genteelly? Our heroine, Miţa, it seems, was a very good rider. Yes. Oh, yes. Very good, indeed.
King Ferdinand (who, by the way, husband of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter).
In fact, she was so good at riding, she was invited to ride the king’s bike. And, it seems, she probably rode it several times. That’s apparently why King Ferdinand gave her this classic Baroque mansion in a great part of town.
(The house, by the way, which sits on a corner, is right across one street from the French Embassy, which seems appropriate somehow, and right across the other from a big church, which actually in some ways also seems appropriate.)
And Miţa didn’t stop there. She also is said to have ridden the bikes of many prominent men, including some very famous artist, a Nazi-sympathizing Prime Minister, and the Portuguese King Manuel, who asked her to marry. She was also said to be the first lover of King Leopold of Belgium. It seems these men all liked her bike riding very much.
Yes, indeed. Miţa was some kind of woman. According to various things written about her, this daughter of a clothes washer, petite as she was with blonde hair and blue-green eyes, knew what she was about. She earned her nickname from a journalist who had fallen in love with her (if the dates are right, when she was 13 years old). She was also nicknamed Miţa Cotroceanca because of the gossip about her relationship with King Ferdinand, who lived at Cotroceni Palace here in town. Then in the 1940s, she married a general and eventually her finances began to suffer before she died in 1968 at the age of 85, presumably her bike-riding days well over.
The church, Biserica Amzei.
And while, I suppose, she’s no Susan B. Anthony, she did make a mark on the history of this country. Consider this from a somewhat overly serious article in the Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies last year. [Some proofreading changes have been made to the original.]
“…we can say that the functions and meanings of the bicycle get reconfigured through history, moving from means of transportation (18th century) to means of emancipation for women (20th century). As a consequence, in Romania we have Miţa Mihăescu, also known as Miţa Biciclista (Miţa the Cyclist). A controversial character of those times, Miţa the Cyclist becomes an exotic appearance in a society where the public/private – male/female dichotomy is strong, the public space being male dominated. Miţa the Cyclist is the first woman that pedaled wearing pants in Bucharest, breaking the social gender norms derived from riding a bicycle, and also through the outfit she chose to wear. I believe that Miţa’s deviations from the social norms were tolerated by the male dominant society thanks to the fact that she was a male chaperon, this label justifying her behavior to society. But still, in her case the bicycle was a symbol of emancipation, she was a woman that no longer depended on a man to travel in the public space, an independent woman that decided on her own the aspects of her life. A modern figure, Miţa was frequently mentioned in the Furnica magazine, thus certifying her modernity and the curiosity that she arose all around her, thus becoming the attraction of interbellum Bucharest.”
Yet another writer described her this way:
“The bicycle with a silver handle belonged to a thin and elegant daughter of Eve, with black curls, silk purple tight pants, with a pinkish blouse that freed fluffy sleeves, with tall boots and white silk headgear, wrapped around in white veil, from which two large needles Madame Butterfly style arose.”
So yes, here she is, Miţa Biciclista. Not a national heroine, perhaps, but a Romanian woman we won’t soon forget. (Thank goodness.)
Furnica magazine.
Indeed, I’m told by my wife that when she was a kid (not all that long ago), she often heard children shout out a rhyme (apparently, only when no parents were near). So now, all together, let’s sing it loud:
“Coana Mița biciclista
A căzut și și-a rupt pizda.”
Now, for any of you out there who have forgotten your Romanian, this translates literally to: “Madam Miţa the cyclist, fell down and broke her pussycat.” (Except her cat wasn’t there.)
Yes, indeed, perfect for kids. And anyway, in Romanian, it rhymes really well.
So now you know why I decided to write this. How could I not? What other woman do you know earns a nickname, a house, a plaque AND a dirty nursery rhyme just for riding a bike and leaving her cat at home? Ah, the good old days.
And where else but in Romania could you find such a plaque? In fact, how many other places would you find such a woman?
by Peter H Frank | Aug 20, 2015 | Politics |
Otter
Logical fallacies are great fun. Ok, they’re not very instructive in learning how to think critically. Like driving down a street filled with potholes, it’s a good idea to avoid them, but that’s not enough to become an F1 champion. Still, they’re fun.
And when thinking of fallacies, there’s no place like politics to find the best ones – or at least, the most ones. Just as the business world is our richest font of stupidity, the world of politics sprouts fallacies like fungus on a wet log. The only game as an observer is to decide whether the tortured argument put forward was intentionally fallacious (hoping they’re fooling all of the people all of the time) or whether it fairly represents the candidate’s energy-saving IQ.
Hillary
Now, I usually avoid any discussion of politics when outside a small group of friends (which you might say is a fair description of my blog’s typical readership). But after hearing our former Secretary of State, former Senator, former First Lady, and former likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton defend herself against her indefensible use of a private email server while she was broadcasting state secrets, I knew I had heard her tactic before.
For those of you unfamiliar with the greatest college movie of all time, I share a scene from it here.
So the two defenses are not precisely parallel, but see if you don’t suspect that Otter (whether pre-med or pre-law) has been hired somewhere on her campaign committee. And no matter your politics, you are certain to agree that it is a sad time for American politics when one of the Clintons, the most practiced dissemblers of our political generation, starts resorting to the same old tired politics of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity.
Clip #1:
Otter from Animal House HERE
Clip #2:
Hillary Clinton from Las Vegas HERE
