Re: Duty Free

1

i've heard that perfume companies actually make a surprisingly large portion of their revenue in duty free shops. Things that are only purchased infrequently, like perfume and high end liquor, are ideal for sale at duty free shops

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2

You may not *think* you want the liter of vodka, but contemplate a 10+ hour flight with a screaming child sitting behind you, kicking your seat. Makes the vodka seem a little more attractive, no?

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3

I very seldom buy makeup but when I do it's usually at a duty-free shop. I have no idea why I feel compelled to buy makeup before I get on a plane.

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4

i bought scotch last time.

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5

It's an easy way to buy gifts for the hosts on the other end. This was an enormous factor in Taiwan in 1984, where tariffs on luxuries were 200%.

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6

2 - Oh, I had the screaming children. Aaaaall the way from Sydney to NYC. With only Nacho Libre as the alternative, which sucked ass.

They don't give you the duty free stuff until you disembark, right?

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7

Aren't duty free shops some sort of huge scam or something? I remember hearing something like that but I can't recall the details.

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8

Nacho Libre

I told you to get the flight with choice of movies.

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9

Are we to presume from 6 that Becks has returned to our shores?

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10

All I have ever bought in duty-free shops is liquor.

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11

7 -- the liquor was authentically a "good deal". (In financial terms only -- not taking into account the long-term damage it will do to my body and soul.)

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12

I like to stop at the duty free shop.

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13

I got a box of Cuban cigars at a duty-free shop in Switzerland, though that's the only time I've bought something in one. Also, they give you the duty-free stuff when you board the plane--they're just making sure locals aren't shopping there to avoid paying the taxes.

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14

Returning to the US from Canada, as far as I could tell the only thing in the duty-free shop that wasn't readily available in the US for much cheaper was some sort of chocolate ball with a toy inside that is apparently banned in the US for safety reasons, so I bought four of them. The toys are pretty boring.

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15

I agree....On the other hand I'm a big fan of the Sky Mall catalog (my brain goes on strike in airplanes, for some reason).

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16

I love reading the Sky Mall catalog. It's so awful.

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17

I like Sky Mall too. Also the in-flight magazine.

(I think we've had this conversation before.)

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18

14 - That would be a Kinder Egg.

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19

I too apply for membership in the Sky Mall fan club.

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20

Yep.

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21

The last time I was in an international departure lounge, I tried to access Unfogged from a public internet terminal, but was told the page couldn't load on account of offensive content.

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22

14: I love how you bought four of them. No half-measures for Cryptic Ned.

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23

I told you to get the flight with choice of movies.

I couldn't sleep at all on my Sydney to LAX flight so I saw all of the movies offered. When Da Vinci Code was the best out of the bunch, you know I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I saw Nacho Libre on the Sydney-LAX flight, only to then find out I was on a plane from LAX to NYC with only one movie choice and that was it. So I got to see it twice.

I saw Lucky Number Slevin on the way over, which wasn't bad for an airplane movie.

And, yes, from 6 you may presume that I have returned to your fair shores. Although I expect to be swamped by work and dead with jetlag for the next few days. I just ordered Season 2 of VMars and plan to use that this weekend as my jetlag recovery program.

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24

Kinder Surprise! But otherwise, Canadian-U.S. duty shops are pretty silly. Oh gee, the exact same stuff!

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25

I also enjoy a good Sky Mall, but I find the turnover of items in the catalog isn't quite as regular as I'd like. "I've seen all these before," I often say, ruefully.

(This weird syntax brought to you by Not Enough Sleep.)

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26

I know I've brought up the book Class by Paul Fussell on the site before but it bears repeating. He devotes a section to tearing Sky Mall apart for preying on the insecurity of people aspiring to some faux idea of what it means to be middle-class.

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27

On a recent flight I endured The Sentinel, which seems to be about 90 minutes of set-up, and just as it seemed that from the muck might sprout a rosy plot point, the sound went out. And then I fell asleep.

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28

Last time I took a transatlantic flight there was a choice of movies, one of which was The Apartment with Jack Lemmon.

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29

My only intercontinental flight experience was from Amsterdam to Newark. There was no choice of movies, but we could choose to listen to the movies or not listen to the movies. The movies were "Meet the Parents" dubbed into French, followed by "Monsters Inc." dubbed into German.

The other end of the round-trip had a choice of movies, if by "movies" I mean "episodes of Friends, Just Shoot Me, Frasier, et al."

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30

28: That is fantastic.

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31

29: Dare I ask how you got to Amsterdam in the first place?

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32

He floated on the wafting scent of pot.

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33

I know I've brought up the book Class by Paul Fussell on the site before but it bears repeating. He devotes a section to tearing Sky Mall apart for preying on the insecurity of people aspiring to some faux idea of what it means to be middle-class.

Actually, this is exactly why I like it so much. ("Middle-class" should be "middle- and upper-class", though.) I especially like the vocabulary-builder ads.

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34

Virgin Atlantic has a ridiculously interesting back-of-the-seat interactive panels. The only problem is that when crossing the atlantic during the middle of the night, one should sleep. Given that my cohorts hostel didn't open till two the next day and we had no freaking clue where the hell we were, our sleepless london adventure was hilarious. If we had no conciously decided to avoid the duty free shop, who the hell knows what would have happened.

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35

Kinder Surprise *come* in four packs. Also, at holiday time, you can get REALLY BIG ones that basically have the same toys in a much larger size. The toys are kind of fun, come on, for little tiny toys that you put together yourself. Plus a lot of people collect 'em. PK loves those.

I, too, buy booze at the duty free sometimes (although honestly, they never have actually good scotch; what's up with that?) and enjoy the insanity of the Sky Mall catalog. *That's* the thing I don't believe anyone ever buys from. Then again, I don't believe anyone ever shops at the Sharper Image or Brookstone, either, but obviously I'm wrong.

On my last trip through Canadian duty free, I bought PK a Canadian jacket, goddamnit. But then I had my reasons.

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36

Becks' question from the post is also surprisingly central theme of Cryptonomicon.

Also, Over Here you can get mongo-sized Kinder Surprise eggs at Halloween, Christmas and Easter. And you can buy the regular ones by the palette, if you are so inclined.

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37

I heartily approve of the use of 'mongo-sized' as a Kinder Egg adjective...

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38

My English roommate usually buys tons of crap at the duty free. She probably gets a decent deal on her makeup, since she buys lots and lots of expensive makeup and probably knows exactly how much it usually costs. But in general she's a sucker for "reduced price!" deals, which I think is the kind of mindset that the Duty Free places are preying on. ("Oh, this bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape is usually $80 and here it'll only be $50. What a deal! Better get it!")

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39

My wife is a sucker for reduced price deals. At duty-free places and supermarkets.

Last time we flew I took a good look at men's 'cosmetic' stuff -- shaving balm, badger hair brushes, that sort of thing -- and it really wasn't any cheaper duty-free than it is bought over the internet.

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40

Kinder Surprise *come*

Gosh, B, it's just chocolate.

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41

never have actually good scotch

I'm not a scotch afficionado, but they had a pretty big selection at the frankfurt airport the times I've shopped duty free booze there (I typically buy cognac at duty free - a tradition I started at sheremetevo in Moscow when there was no ruble exchange open before 6am when my flight left).

central theme of Cryptonomicon.

I don't remember who buys that crap as a central theme, was it?

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42

The One-Note Flute, right?

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43

It may be that, as tariffs go down, duty-free will simply become a kind of prestige spending. Evading tax was the original purpose though.

If I'm not mistaken, on liquor you still come out ahead, because you can evade state tax. I don't know if you have to be on an international flight to do that, though.

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44

I've seen Macallan 18 at the duty-free shop.

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45

When we came home from Ireland, I bought Bushmill 12-year-old single malt at the duty-free shop and I must say it was the best Irish whisky I have drunk. LB take note! (Also, LB, you might be interested in this: I was drinking an Islay malt scotch last week, the name of which I forget, but it seemed to me to have a lot in common with Irish whisky. I'm not sure if this is generally true of Islay malt whisky or just the particular one I was drinking. Aha! It was called Laphroaig or some similar spelling.)

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46

I got the spelling right. Can anyone advise me how to pronounce the name of that spirit?

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47

Laphroaig?

It's pronounced:

Lah - froy - [i]g

The last two syllables are run together so it's more:

Lah - froy'g

IPA notation or audio available on request.

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48

Short "a", then roughly like "rogue", as in bad guy (that's an approximation for non-Scots).

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49

Stress on second syllable.

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50

Sorry, Matt, didn't know you were around. I was going by how it sounds in Kirkaldy, which it probably a bad idea.

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51

47-9 -- thanks, I think I got it. You guys seem to agree except about the pronunciation of the "oai", on which I am going to take ttaM's word over OFE's.

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52

I'm not some super expert on the pronunciation of whisky names.

I am pretty sure I'm right though. I just found this:

http://www.folloder.com/sounds/scotch/laphroai.au

Which is the chairman of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society pronouncing it. His pronunciation is the same as mine.

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53

I don't question that you're right. I should know better than listen to a bunch of piss artists in a pub in Fife.

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54

Fifers are a wierd insular clan all to themselves.* And I grew up in Stirlingshire, which is pretty much the next county.

* Consistently elected a Communist MP to Parliament, for decades, for example.

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55

Hey as long as I've got you Great British people's ear: Have you read any Zadie Smith? And specifically The Autograph Man which I just finished last night and was totally floored by? Any comments on the accuracy of her takes?

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56

I read 3/4 of White Teeth and then lost my copy moving house. As far as I got I recommend it highly, and she's extremely credible, but you need to bear in mind that her characters are somewhat overstated as a matter of style. ttaM wil now contradict me completely.

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57

I also have a Great British-related question: Is there any point to the Welsh and Scots having their own parliaments, or is it just an exercise in self-esteem? Does it make anything better or more convenient? Is it a giant waste of money?

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58

Matt??? I daren't go there.

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59

she's a sucker for "reduced price!" deals

This is the sort of gimmick (which I have an admitted weakness for) the "sales days" in France (or maybe just Paris) try to avoid, right? I think they're a bit more strict on when you can say something is actually reduced in price.

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60

re: 57

Well, Scotland has always had a different education system, legal system and established Church and was an independent country until the 18th century. It's also larger than several other European countries and Scotland's economy is fairly large. Scotland's GDP is roughly comparable (give or take 10% or so) to, say, Finland or Portugal. So there's nothing particularly wierd about it having its own parliament.

I've been living in England for most of the past 6 or 7 years though, so I don't have any sense for how well the scottish parliament functions on a day to day level and whether it's pragmatically beneficial to Scots. It certainly seems to have made a couple of decisions that I approve of that go contrary to the decisions of the UK national parliament e.g on education funding.

I approve of it on a general 'get the government closer to the people' level. I'd generally favour a more rather than less devolved form of government for the whole of the UK.

re: 56

I read and liked 'White Teeth'. I can't really speak for how accurate it is as a protrayal of the people she writes about -- I'm a white Scot rather than a black or pakistani Londoner -- but it doesn't ring dreadfully false.

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61

The price of her ear for dialogue seems to be a total inability to end a novel. She could have replaced the last dozen pages of White Teeth with [-30-] or some other full-stop without losing any effect.

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62

Armsmasher -- I actually really liked the endings of both her novels I've read so far -- so many loose threads were left hanging in a way that might well have irritated me in a different book, but that here seemed really well calculated to keep me turning the story over in my head for days and weeks afterward, thinking about what might have come of them.

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63

(And because the stories are so good I'm quite pleased for the opportunity to keep turning them over in my head.)

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64

The Welsh one is certainly a gigantic waste of money and a self-esteem boost to a people who don't really need one -- Why, hello Daniel, fancy meeting you here ....

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65

61: Yes. 62: No.

I really enjoy her writing, and without any local knowledge to test it against it rings true to me, but I hate the loose endings.

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66

59.--Argh, I shouldn't admit this, but I have found the end of season sales in Paris (June-July) completely irresistible and actually think you can get some pretty decent real value for the price. Good thing I can't go back to that damned town for another decade or so. Saves me a lot of money trying to look fashionable and all that.

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67

The Welsh one is certainly a gigantic waste of money and a self-esteem boost to a people who don't really need one

As it stands, possibly. But isn't that because it hasn't been given sufficient authority to do anything useful? I'm sure nobody really needs a glorified county council whose income is determined in Westminster, but that's not the whole question, is it?

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68

What's the point of having a British Parliament? Shouldn't the Brits face reality and accept territorial status?

They'd have the same rights that Puerto Ricans or any other Americans have, and they wouldn't have to pretend to have a foreign policy.

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69

68: Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Tony Blair may profit by their example.

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70

Is there any point to the Welsh and Scots having their own parliaments

Kind of have to with the Scots, or you end up doing like the Romans and walling the place off.

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71

23 - I'd think lucky number slevin would be a bit too complicated to be much good as an airplane movie. Best airplane movie I ever watched was Dodge Ball, because I could only half-pay attention, fall asleep in the middle, watch parts with the volume off, and so forth and the bits I did watch were still pretty entertaining.

Bringing your arabic homework along is double-plus unrecommended on account of (1) arabic, duh and (2) your brain will not be engaged enough to deal with it anyway. Native Arabic-speakers excepted, since they're basically scrooed anyway wrt reason (1).

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72

A little late but -- SkyMall.

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