All Aboard! And Now We Wait.

Australia Travelog #47
SYD Airport - Sun, 31 Dec 2023, 3pm

Hawk and I boarded flight UA 870 over an hour and a half ago. We haven't gone anywhere. I mean, the aircraft hasn't gone anywhere. It's an hour late for departure and still waiting.

Getting to our own seats was a fairly orderly process. We were among the first to board— even though we had an unexpectedly long walk from the Singapore Airlines flight lounge as United changed our gate at the last moment from one next to the lounge to one clear on the other side of the overpriced high-end shopping mall— I mean, airport. We settled in to our aisle-window seat pair in United's Economy Plus section and rechecked the app to see if the middle seat between us was empty, similar to our flight out to Australia a week earlier. It was still empty and there were a number of empties scattered around the aircraft, indicating a likelihood we wouldn't be crammed in with a neighbor. Hooray!

Left Your Screaming Kid at Home? Here's a Spare....

Boarding early means you get to watch everyone else board so you get a feel for who's on the flight with you. This flight is strangely full of young families with young kids. It's like everyone around us has at least one child. There's one in front of us, two in the row behind us, two across the aisle, at least one both ahead of and behind them, etc. And most these kids are fussy. Oh, joy. This is going to be a special 13-hour long flight.



Particularly special was one of the kids across from me. He's a seat-kicker. Whenever he's angry, or frustrated, or bored, or wanted attention, he'd kick his feet. And he wouldn't just kick once or twice... His feet would seem to be whirling around like a windmill, like the roadrunner in Roadrunner & Coyote.

Even worse, the kid's parents did nothing about it. One of the other parents nearby gently observed, "Wow, your son seems very anxious today...." The boy's mother responded, "Yeah, he's a kicker. It's a good thing the seat in front of him on the way out here was empty, because he kicked the crap out of it for 15 hours. All I can say is I hope there's nobody sitting there today."

All you can hope?!?! I fumed silently. Especially with the kid in an aisle seat there's pretty much a 100% chance there will be someone sitting in front. This parent is fully aware that her son's behavior will make someone absolutely miserable, and she's seemingly not prepared to do anything about it. Even as a man took the seat in front of the kid. Like, she didn't even try talking to her kid in an age-appropriate fashion (the boy's about 5 years old) about appropriate behavior in public.

Delayed as United Packs 'Em On

Boarding seemed to wind down but we kept waiting. Our scheduled departure time of 2:00pm passed.



I make fun of Southwest Airlines a lot for running behind schedule so often.... United Airlines doesn't have a great on-time record in my experience, either.

Except this delay was more than just the aircraft not being ready or there being a traffic jam in front of us to take off. United was holding our flight to put more people on it. Were they asking people on the street with fussy children if they wanted to buy last-minute tickets? People started trickling in. The pilot announced over the speakers that we were taking people from another flight.

A few other passengers and I started checking our flight apps. There aren't that many UA flights at SYD so it wasn't hard to see what other flight was in jeopardy. It was the 12:10pm SFO flight, the one we rebooked away from 2 days before starting this trip. As the hour wound on toward 3pm the earlier flight still hadn't left yet! And the fact that UA was moving people from there to here implied that it would now leave after us.

The delay has been frustrating, but at least for us it's just a minor inconvenience. All that happens is we'll get home an hour later. It's not like we have to make a connection in SFO, as many people on the flight are, and now risk missing it and having to be rebooked.

The biggest nuisance to us is that our treasured empty middle seat would likely be toast. Indeed, a woman came to sit in our row... but she had a boarding pass for my seat. "I'll fix that," a flight attendant said, as she escorted the woman away.

Op-Up for Two!

Another flight attendant returned to our row a few minutes later, paperwork in hand. "I have new seats for you," she said, addressing Hawk and me, "But they're not together. Is that okay?"

"Where are the new seats?" I asked reflexively. I didn't want to be rooked. I have, on occasion, been moved to seating that's less desirable than what I selected when I made my reservation.

"We're upgrading you," the FA announced cheerfully.

HELL to the YES!

My new seat aboard UA 830— in United's Polaris class!

Hawk and I totally don't mind not sitting together. I know that idea is freaky to many couples. They're like, "How could we possibly be apart for a 13 hour flight?" Whereas our attitude is, "Eh. We've been together constantly for the past 8 days. We can handle time apart." Especially when it means seats big enough to actually sleep in!

More to come....

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Bankrupt Crackpot

I don't know if it's just my newsfeed, but investment self-help author Robert Kiyosaki has been in the news a lot lately. It seems like every week recently I've seen another article or two about him. Kiyosaki is author of the classic financial literacy book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

I picked up a copy of the book in the 2010s and devoured it. I kinda wish I'd grabbed a copy in the late 90s (it was first published in 1997) to read years earlier as it would've helped crystalize some of my understanding of finances and building wealth that I'd had to figured out on my own. But it wasn't a big loss reading it later as first, like I just said, I did figure it out on my own; and second, not all of Kiyosaki's advice was actually sound.

A Classic Tale of Two Archetypes

Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad is part financial literacy guide, part motivational self-help book, and part biography/autobiography. With the subtitle "What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-— That The Poor & The Middle Class Do Not!" Kiyosaki weaves in stories about his own father vs. a man who lived nearby.

Kiyosaki's dad, who earned numerous college degrees and worked his way up to the highest echelons of his career in education, was actually the poor dad. For all his degrees and professional accolades, he never built lasting wealth for himself or his family. And when he was dismissed from his job for (literally) political reasons he had few employment alternatives. Meanwhile the author's neighbor, a man with limited formal education, built a business in landscaping and property management. He lived modestly and retired wealthy— mainly because the business he built and the assets he purchased continued to provide him income even once he stopped working full time.

I'd summarize the lessons in Kiyosaki's book as these— and keep in mind I'm going on memory from ten-ish years ago:

1. Understand the difference between assets and liabilites— and invest in assets.


2. You're very unlikely to become rich solely by working for someone else. You've got to build something you own, whether it's a business or a portfolio of assets, that generates positive cash flow— and keep investing part of that cash flow to grow it.


3. Buying real estate and renting it out is the classic way to do this. Other forms of investment are suspect, while real estate always works. There are no exceptions. It works in all markets.

Problems with Kiyosaki's Advice

You can probably tell from the way I'ved worded the third point, above, that I saw problems with Kiyosaki's advice. The main one was his fixation on real estate investing as the only path to financial success. Real estate isn't a bad category of investment, generally speaking, but it's certainly not the only one worth considering. And in certain markets it's way harder to invest in— and way slower to deliver returns— than in others.

My real estate market in Silicon Valley is/was one of those areas that doesn't work like Kiyosaki insists. The challenge here is that the price of residential real estate is too high relative to the rent you can collect on it. Unless you can put a significant amount of money into the purchase you'll be left with a mortgage that costs way more in interest each month than the property brings in in rent. In other words, you'll be cash flow negative. And the cruciality of being cash flow positive was something Kiyosaki repeatedly emphasized. But in his book and in multiple speeches and media appearances for years he dismissed this factual reality and criticized anyone who asked about it as unintelligent.

Bankrupt Crackpot

Several years ago Kiyosaki changed his own tune on real estate. He went from rejecting the argument that pricey real estate markets are poor options for middle-class people looking to build wealth to embracing it. "Of course I'd never buy in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, or Seattle," he said in his changed tune, betraying zero self-awarness of the fact he'd insisted on just that for... oh... 20 years.

Moreover, Kiyosaki went from saying that real estate (where it was still worthwhile buying) was a better investment to saying that it was the only worthwhile investment— save for gold. He was predicting a massive destruction of the stock market claiming it was, essentially, a mass shared delusion. "He's gone from being a real estate guru to a permabear," I remember reading in an investor forum. ("Permabear" is an investing term basically for a perpetual sky-is-falling pessimist.) Mind you, this was back in 2016 or so. The stock market has nearly tripled in value since then.

As far as today? Kiyosaki is still a perpetual pessimist. Except now he's hawking crypto as a "real" investment while still saying equities are fake and a trap. Oh, and a big part of why he's in the news is that he's basically bankrupt. He publicized in December that he's $1.2 billion in debt. So much for his brilliant investment techniques! The full picture of his finances is secret, but analysts know that his main source of income— cash flow— is royalties from his books. Thus part of his "in the news twice a week" thing is him and his publicist trying to keep him in the news so more people buy his now-old books to help bail him out.

No, thanks.

RIP, Dan Marburger

Sometimes the tragedy of the week keeps on tragedy...-ing. That happened today when school principal Dan Marburger died from wounds he incurred in a shooting at his Des Moines, IA area school on Jan. 4. Marburger died after a week and half from multiple gunshot wounds he suffered trying to intervene to stop the shooter. Example news coverage: Des Moines Register article, 14 Jan 2024; NBC News article, 14 Jan 2024; CNN article, 14 Jan 2024.

With neither a weapon nor police or military training[1] Marburger tried doing what he knew as an educator— to talk to the shooter, try to calm him down, and if nothing else delay his rampage so that students in the line of fire might escape. Marburger succeed on the last of these, as only one other student, whom authorities believe was shot before Marbuger, died.

Marburger, aged 55, worked his whole career in education, and had been principal of Perry High School in Perry, IA since 1997. He leaves behind a wife, 5 children, at least one grandchild, and other relatives.

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[1] I point this out because it's an article of faith among gun rights supporters that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." There's sadly very little evidence supporting that as (a) a good many of these nutjob shooters with too-easy access to guns kill themselves in their rampages, (b) the record of even trained police officers in stopping mass shooters is checkered at best— here I'm thinking specifically about the Uvalde, TX school shooting in May 2022 when police officers waited an hour an a half to confront the shooter even as students pinned down in the school where the shooter was still shooting made repeated 911 calls begging authorities to intervene— and (c) the record of civilians intervening is worse. When Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was injured in a Tuscon, AZ mass shooting in 2011, a would-be good Samaritan with a gun rushed to the scene and attempted to fire his weapon at a person he saw reaching for a gun on the ground. Fortunately for everyone involved that would-be good Samaritan's gun jammed; because the person he intended to kill was another good Samaritan who had just helped disarm the mass shooter.