Mayonnaise coated Krugerrand escapes Predictive Telephone
The (tourist) bus had returned to Geneva and Neil, the Kindergarten teacher-îsh guide, had his back turned. Nazy and I escaped and crossed the bridge (there was a rainbow on the Geneva jet.) By now it was time for dinner. Because we didn’t want to cook (Nazy), clean-up (Dan) or wait (Dan) we decided to eat out. This introduced an immediate challenge:
“You’ve been here two months, Dan. What do you recommend?”
“I like the Persian place.”
“You took me there the first night.”
“Well, eh, there’s a nice pizza..”
“No.”
“ or a fast food.”
“No-er”
“ We could.”
“No-est, Dan. There is a very nice restaurant in Eaux Vives Park.”
“Really?” I replied. “I know that place. It is expensive,” I thought.
“It’s right along the Lake – on our side of the Lake. Bus 1 will take us there.”
“Bus 1? Not a chance. I know that park. We need Bus E or Bus G.”
“Shouldn’t buses have numbers?”
“Isn’t that beside the point?”
“We can walk.”
“Walk? Did you wear shoes that appropriate for an activity like, eh, walking?”
“Dan..”
“I know where that restaurant is located. It’s too far to walk.”
[It wasn’t too far, the dinner was great; we sat outdoors and watched the sun set over lake Geneva. It even wasn’t too expensive.]
My new mobile phone, is a break from my iPast. It is a Nokia Lumina 920 running Windows 8. (The iPhone had gotten somewhat stale and the Samsung Galaxy seemed to be an iPhone copy that did complicated things in a complicated way.) Nevertheless, using a Microsoft mobile system a shot was a shock to my system. Happily the new phone has performed well. One app is especially good:
“Sending an SMS message is notoriously difficult with the tiny touch screen ‘keyboard’ on a mobile phone.”
“Your Nokia is not tiny.” Nazy retorted.
I ignored the dig and carried on: “The iPhone is pretty good at correcting standard finger slips. The Nokia, however, ‘learns’ my vocabulary and style. It doesn’t correct, it predicts. It guesses the word I’m thinking about, sometimes even before I start to type.”
“Is it accurate?”
“Yep! It’s great software.”
“Or - maybe you are just boringly predictable and lacking in creative flair. If the ‘brains’ in a mobile phone can..”
“Indubitably, mein liebchen,” I replied seeing where this was going. “Therefore and forthwith, I shall, with undisguised ingenuity and uncompromising, gazelle-like dexterity, endeavour to magnify my unpredictable and creatively ingenious conversational and written wit. Scorning conventional rules of sentence structure, I will punctuate (!?) with quantum mechanical, indeed Heisenberg-level, uncertainty as a matter of .... principle.”
While I was confusing the phone, Darius was able to come to Geneva in time to be with both Nazy and me. There was but one challenge:
“Where am I going to sleep, Dad?” Darius asked as he stretched his arms, scrapping his knuckles on both walls.
“”That’s a good question, my son,” I replied. “A question for your mother. Nazy! You found a closet for your clothes, can you find an extra bedroom for your son?”
[Although I was joking, I wouldn’t have been completely shocked if Nazy actually found a door into the Twilight Zone.]
While Nazy bustled about, Darius asked about my work at UBP.
“I’m working on compliance projects, Dar. New and complex regulations have been imposed to prevent what happened before from happening again.”
“So you’re closing the barn door after the horse has escaped?”
“Correct. We are implementing government regulations to prevent what will never happen again from ever happening again. But, I’m also working on FATCA.”
“The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act makes me ill, Dad.”
“Me too! The US tax authority, the IRS, has demanded that every bank, credit union, brokerage company, insurance firm, pension provider and savings and loan in the world report on financial activities of any American with assets abroad.”
“How can the IRS do that?”
“They are a bully. A big bully that can get away with anything – no matter how outrageous. If a foreign financial insituation doesn’t comply, the IRS will simply seize money from any of their USA transactions.”
“That’s robbery.”
“That’s the IRS. Almost every foreign asset is in-scope.”
“Almost?”
“Not my pocket change – unless it contains a Krugerrand or two. However, I have discovered that the coins I keep in a mayonnaise Jar are in scope..”
“Maybe you’re..”
“But I can foil them, Dar. Instead of using an empty jar, I’ll put my coins into a full jar of mayonnaise. That way they won’t find anything.”
While I was at work, reflecting on the fact that the bank was paying me to help the IRS persecute me, Nazy and Darius were touring Geneva and the environs.
After work one evening I joined them on Bus 8. We “de-bussed” at the end of the line, walked across the French border and took a téléphérique to a cliff-top station with a beautiful view of Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva.
More on Darius’ visit next week including trips to Annecy and Mendrisco (via the Mont Blanc Tunnel). Additional photos are available by clicking here.
blog comments powered by Disqus