Day 11 Hawaiian Cruise

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Day 11, Hawaiian Cruise November 6, 2011
Weather: partly cloudy High 72 Low 60
Sunrie 7:20 Sunset 5:30
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Today started out and continued to be a pretty dreary day at sea. There is lots of wind outside.

The LasVegas Company Fixer

The 84 year old approached me at coffee this morning. He has been "collecting life stories this trip and mostly relating his own. He has been "working the piazza" in the morning for most of the trip. Today was my turn.
I had watched him approach other and he diffidently had the gift of gab. I overheard that he had connections in Escondido. Escondido was one of the childhood homes of my dad.  So when he approached me for some conversation, I asked him, "How is the man from Escondido doing today?"
He was a little taken back that I knew that, but it only changed his patter a little.
He had good mobility but had that long hound dog look that many years in the world of accountancy could give you.
He said that his job was to turn companies around. He claimed to be very successful at it.
He talked through his bushy eye brows. He introduced himself as "Chuck." I had overheard his story before at least three times with various people seated in the piazza. He took the Piazza as a center of the town literally. He agreed that he had lived in Escondido, a town just north of San Diego California for a large part of his life. He only recently, in the last three years had moved to Las Vegas. He moved there because California was taxing him to death. He owned or used to own numerous parcels of land including one that was about 1200 feet above sea level. It had no electricity or water. He brought in a railroad generator and drilled his own well. When they came to "provide" him with electricity, his power bill went up. They would make him pay for the water that he had drilled. He won a lawsuit that showed that he was out of their water district, so he could use his own well without having to pay an entity. 

He has always worked hard he claimed. He was sent to rescue a jewelry company based out of Chicago that was losing 800,000 dollars a year. He turned it around by paying the employees much more than then the prevailing rates and firing the ones that were poor employees. He also reduced the market prices sold by them by a third and underbid the competitors. The company turned around to be making $28 million. They refused to give him his bonus on this turn around because they felt that the turn around was a fluke. Two more years later it was still doing that kind of business.

He wanted to pay his secretary a big raise. The company wouldn't do it because she was "union."
He has a bad taste in his mouth regarding unions. He said that he is a "conservative" not a Republican.

He also stated that he was behind the idea for Costco. He knows the president of costco by first name and also the owner of its older competitor, Price Club, He had someone try to sell him  a 2 dollar coffee cup that he could sell for 3 dollars. He found out that the company had a warehouse in San Francisco. He called them knowing that they were paying a lot for warehouse space for all of the cups. He said that he would pay 39 cents for all they had. He sold them in his stores for two for a dollar. He had two railroad cars full of these cups that he warehoused in Texas in stead of San Francisco. He took an 18 percent profit from the transaction and shared the idea with the founder of Costco. Costco moved into that kind of sales and the rest is history.

He went on about his connection with Jimmy Carter and Clinton.."Two of the worst " presidents outside of Obama.. yada yada Yada.
He said that when Jerry Brown, the current governor of California, father was governor, he vowed to never build a freeway in San Diego because he disliked the mayor and the politics of the area. The next governor did.
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Hard Working Mexican

I met a miner on the ship. He was in his early 50's and short.. about 5 feet one inch. He said that he lived in Chico California. His wife was a RN .
 He worked with crews that drilled underground to build utility lines and other infrastructures. His maid job was material removal. He ran a small train with rails that took the soil out form where they were digging.
He had done farm labor but realized that to get his kids though schools he needed more money.

Work pretty much stopped for him in 2008. He had to return to the farms. He was making good money but not as much as working the tunnels. He worked planting almond and other trees in orchards around Chico and Stockton and Lodi.

His kids are both gown now. He is proud that his daughter is working up the corporate ladder in CVR pharmacy . They told her that she had to get trained as a pharmacy tech to be a daily manager and eventually a district manager of about 40 stores.

The son had a college education too. He went on to study to become a computer engineer. He is working for a private corporation near China Lake in Southern California.
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He and his wife and her mother had chosen this cruise because all of his current jobs were completed . The last one as a miner took 3 years . He could not take time off during that time.

The was a sea day. The football game (being Sunday) were sparse. The Green Bay Packers fans and the San Diego Fans got their wish of coverage on the big casino tv. The Green Bay Packers caem through which delighted the vocal crowd. I am sure that if there was a rallying song the Green Bay Packers fans would have broken into song.

In the afternoon I watched the movie "Super 8". It would be available on Netflicks about 20 days later. It was shown in the stardust theater.

Dinner: Italian themed
Pat: antipasto seafood mix, mussels, calamari ,
        parma ham and cantaloupe
        veal scallopine
         snow crabs (legs cut in half lengthwise
         Tiramisu
         Zabaglione  ice cream

Sue: zippy peach soup
         snow crab legs
          lemon sorbet

I watched the movie "The Help" up in the other big venue stage.. the vista lounge. Its a powerful movie about prejudice in the 60's with the black people that were the "help" to the rich white people of Jackson Mississippi.