Cultural Pants Shock

I wasn’t prepared or ready for the culture shock I received during a recent trip to China.  One particular cultural difference both surprised and a bit repulsed me, and it took me awhile to get comfortable with it.  I was amused yet appalled by the no-diaper toddler attire.  Yup, no diapers, just crotchless little pants.  Kind of a squat and go on the street scene.  From that moment on, I didn’t look up at all the skyscraper’s marvelous architecture as I was more concerned with how one deals with accidentally stepping in…well, you catch my drift.  In reality, it makes sense in some ways, no diapers to change, no landfill issues, less parental expense; however, I couldn’t figure out the wipe part and I kept thinking about the street cleaning person…wow, talk about a crappy job! 

        --- CRW

Who’s The Real Thief

The concept of travel insurance is to reduce any unforeseen financial crises due to theft, disruption, or physical hardships to travelers while away from home.  Smart decision, good idea, right?  Well, that wasn’t the case when my daughter was traveling in Europe and had her laptop and camera stolen.

The travel insurance company covered $500 maximum of the $2500 lose per the fine print regarding electrical and computer devices.  Then to add insult to injury, by just contacting my homeowner insurance company via phone on a weekend to see if my homeowner policy might work and confirmed that my deductible was equal to the difference, the stupid insurance company considered that a call a claim and gave it a number even though nothing was going to be done. 

In the long haul, the homeowners insurance company revoked my “no claim” discount and ALL the other homeowners insurance companies as well denied the discount for the next five years, as the so-called claim was turned in and ended up on my Clue Report.  I figure that the total lose added  up to over $3500 with the lost items, increased premiums, less the diminutive $500 reimbursement.  Lesson learned; read the ALL the fine print, get an understanding of what the language means, then determine who the real thieves are.

        --- PC

Scared the Money Out of Us

Our church group was on a mission trip to help out an orphanage in Mexico a few years back.  We felt very proud about all that we had done for the orphanage in the two weeks there and started home.  An hour or so away from the orphanage a Mexican Police car pulled us over and started waving machine guns at us, demanding that they search our van for contraband.  After we were out of the vehicle, they peeked into the van and continued to intimidate and scare us.  The contraband search was their excuse to pull us over, whereas the real reason we found out was to get payoff money.  After we handed them all the cash we had, which wasn’t a huge amount, they let us continue on.  We prayed for them that they wouldn’t ever hurt anyone, and we all agreed after we stopped shaking that the incident wasn’t going to tarnish the good in what we had accomplished.

        --- Shaken But Not Stirred