The Swiss Banker

While on holiday in Zurich, Switzerland, I dined with a Swiss banker.  Guess what the minimum deposit was for a non-resident to open an account at her bank?  $1M USD.  I paused for a moment, leaned over, then quietly suggested she pay for our lunch.  I was joking.

She dismissed my quip, explained the ever-changing tax laws, and remarked on the steady pressure from the United States Internal Revenue Service to fully disclose the financial assets of American account holders with deposits in Switzerland.  Even though internationally financed terrorism and illicit drug money laundering are factual reality, we all know the real reason for the pressure-- the Internal Revenue Service wants its cut of the cash hoard.

Just when you think the days of nameless, numbered bank accounts are over, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the always transparent USA are still ranked #1, #2, and #3, respectively, on the Financial Secrecy Index as of 2015.  So before you take the $1M you just inherited to Singapore, Cayman Islands or Luxembourg, consider the words of Dorothy, "There's no place like home."

How I Recovered My iPhone From A Thief (In Less Than 4 Hours)

The sun glared from above as I dismounted my motorcycle.  I pulled off my gloves, took off my helmet, unbuttoned my jacket and proceeded into the restaurant.  After enjoying a delicious lunch with one of my dearest friends, I stood up and scanned our table to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind.  Then I realized the unthinkable-  my cell phone was missing.

I checked my pockets, looked under our table, looked under the seat cushion, and looked around our table again.  I asked my friend if she had seen my cell but she hadn’t.  I told the restaurant manager to be on the lookout for a black iPhone 5 and ran outside to check in, on and around my motorcycle.

I found nothing.  I opened and emptied each of my side cases, squeezed my spare gloves, peered into every shadowy nook on my bike, and looked around the parking lot.  Reality set in.  I was living the nightmare millions of us dare not think about.  I lost my cell phone, my connection to the world, one of my most prized possessions.  My mind instantly went into memory mode, “Did I backup my data?  How many voice notes had I recorded since my last backup?  Which apps did I leave open?  How much of my personal data might be exposed?  Will they steal my identity?  Did I leave my phone at home?”  It was password protected but that may not be enough.  Then it occurred to me- use Apple’s Find My iPhone on my friend’s laptop and trace that sucker.

I ran back into the restaurant and grabbed my friend’s laptop.  After losing seconds getting the password to the restaurant’s wifi, I logged in and selected my iPhone 5 from among my Apple devices.  The page loaded and there it was!  I gasped in shock and awe as I saw my cell phone bleeping 15 minutes away…  in the bad part of town.  I couldn’t believe it.  Find My iPhone actually worked.  I paused, then it sank in, "Someone stole my iPhone."  I knew where it was so I was going to get it.

The clock was ticking.  I enabled my iPhone’s lost mode and my friend threw me the keys to her Prius.  We rushed off with an open laptop tracking on the move when we suddenly lost our wifi connection.  Ugh.  Her laptop didn’t have a network card.  She pulled out her Samsung Galaxy but Apple’s tracking application wasn’t compatible with Android.  Our adventure was over as quickly as it began.  We drove in the direction of my phone anyway, stopped at a hotel along the way and parked.  I ran inside the lobby with her open laptop in hand and tried logging onto the hotel’s wifi.  The password the hotel had posted in the lobby didn’t work.  I waited in line at the front desk for what seemed like forever, only to be informed that the hotel’s wifi was down.  I told the desk manager about my real-time theft and active manhunt.  She escorted me down the employee-only hallway behind the front desk and let me jump onto her ethernet connected computer.  I wrote down the street address of the phone’s current location and sprinted back to the Prius.

The house looked vacant.  There were no curtains on the windows and the driveway was empty.  I looked at the house and thought about what I might do if confronted by a man with a knife or a gun, a man with no dignity or respect for life.  Honestly, it was a passing thought.  I didn’t care who had my phone; they were going to give it back to me and if not they would experience the gravity of my will.  I grabbed the door handle and shifted my body to open the door.

At that same moment I realized my phone may have moved on.  I let go of the handle, called my sister with my friend’s cell and asked her to track my phone using my username and password.  My sister logged into my Apple account from her iPhone and sure enough, my intuition was correct.  The phone wasn’t at the house.  They got lucky.

I pulled up to the next sighting.  There were so many apartments.  The phone was definitely here but the location was not specific enough for me to pin it among the apartment buildings and individual units.  I jumped out of the car and ran towards a police officer parked in a nearby cruiser.  Finally.  I caught a break.

The briefing didn’t go well.  The officer explained that he could’t do anything unless I called the county police department and filed a police report.  Images of me waiting on hold, getting bounced around extension after extension, answering question after question, while my phone got farther and farther away filled my mind.  Even after filing the report, the officer couldn’t do much since I didn’t have an exact location within the apartment complex.  It was a lost cause and I lost precious time in the process.  Then my sister called with a new location.  My iPhone was in a huge building about 12 minutes north.

What looked like a huge industrial complex from Apple’s satellite image turned out to be an indoor shopping mall.  The green dot poised itself inside the building, then outside, then inside again.  We raced around the parking lot looking for someone loitering, someone who didn’t belong.  Seeing no one suspicious, we parked and ran into the mall.  My sister texted my friend another image.  The dot was still.  My iPhone was triangulated via cell towers and matched with a satellite image less than a minute ago.  It was time to pounce.

I ran up and down the mall looking for someone selling an iPhone.  Seeing no one, I found mall security.  I found three mall security officers, told them my story, showed them Apple’s satellite image and we sprung into action.  They knew right where the dot was inside the mall.  I couldn’t wait to look the thief in the eyes.

Suddenly the dot disappeared.  My sister said it just vanished like someone turned off my phone.  I ran outside the mall near its last location but only saw a grocery store clerk sitting on the curb eating a sandwich.  No thief.  No phone.  My sister asked if I wanted to wipe the phone.  My thoughts raced, “Wipe the phone, lose it forever.  Don’t wipe the phone, maybe, just maybe, they’ll turn it on again.  Maybe.”  I walked back inside defeated.  I informed the security officers that the green dot vanished.  I had no idea where my phone was.  Maybe I should wipe it.  Then one of the officers said, “Follow me…  but don’t walk too close.”

He walked up to a small, independent mobile phone retailer at a kiosk inside the mall.  He asked if they had bought any iPhones today.  The clerk jumped, “Yes.  A man just sold me an iPhone about five minutes ago.”  I overheard him and rushed the sales counter.  A black iPhone 5, with a small dent in the corner just like mine, was plugged into his computer via USB.  He was one keystroke away from wiping it.  I blurted out, “That’s my phone!”  Security told him my phone had been stolen and the sales clerk handed me the still plugged in device.  In a moment of suspended belief, I keyed in my password and the phone unlocked.  Everyone stood there.  No one could believe it, least of all me.  After driving all over town, literally tracking a moving target by GPS and satellite images to confront a thief, my tale of woe was over.  My phone was unscathed, intact, data untouched.  Incredibly, it was back in my hand.

The sales clerk paid the thief $400 cash for my iPhone.  The clerk handed me the phone, reluctantly, knowing full well it was stolen property and he was out $400.  Mall security called the owner of the retail kiosk and the owner authorized my repossession of my phone free of charge.  How kind of him.  I contacted county police, filled out a police report, and the police said the retailer was required by law to obtain the seller’s driver’s license information, log the serial number into the county’s stolen property database, and then wait 30 days before reselling the phone.  None of these steps were taken by the retailer.  The county police used my report to investigate the retailer and mall security promised to obtain the security camera footage from the retailer’s cameras to find the thief.  I don’t know if the thief was ever caught, but I know I got my iPhone back safe and sound thanks to Apple’s incredible device tracking software, my amazing friend who got the ride of her life that afternoon, my sister’s vigilance and support, and the mall’s security team.

My iPhone was stolen and recovered in less than 4 hours.  Apple’s software is even more robust now and my mind is even more at ease.  Now, if only Apple had given me a ride back to my motorcycle.

A World In Motion

Waking from my dream world into another dream world, I am greeted by the sun.  I lay motionless under the covers and listen to birds sing.  A cool summer air mass descends from Canada and pushes its way through my open window.  I lay comfortably in an endless moment of pleasure, breath deeply to freeze frame the moment, then watch the sun fill my bedroom with light.

The rising sun is a trick, a sleight of hand, an illusion.  The earth spins, like the particles from which it and I are made.  Our bodies, a galaxy of spinning particles inextricably woven by unseen forces, are in a constant state of motion.   We all spin.  We are always in motion.  Every moment of our conscious and unconscious existence is in motion and we are surrounded by motion.  I lay in bed in awe, motionless, and experience the quiet realization that I’m buzzing alive in a frenzy of subatomic activity as the earth rolls into a new day.  It’s time to move.  It’s time to live.  Good morning world.

The Candy Wrapper

While walking down a sidewalk in Washington, D.C., my eyes caught a little girl lifting a crumpled plastic wrapper to her Mom.  She had just unwrapped her candy ring and didn’t know what to do with the wrapper.  Her Mom swatted it away from her and said, “Throw that trash on the ground.  That’s where it belongs.”  I was three shades of speechless.  I couldn't believe what I just heard.  This wasn't a joke, this wasn't a skit, I literally just watched a Mom teach her child to litter.  I nearly ran up to confront them and maybe I should have.  Instead, I picked up the litter behind them and disposed of it quietly and properly.

​Think about it.  We all see awful things in life.  The worst is seeing something awful unfold that was completely avoidable.  It's even worse when that something is teaching the next generation the wrong way to behave, the wrong way to do things-  in this case, managing waste.  It would have taken Mom all of three seconds to stuff the candy wrapper into her pocket until she found a trash bin.  She could have seized the moment to teach her daughter how to be responsible, how to care for planet Earth a little better, and how her actions directly impact everyone around her.

Think before you act.  Keep your candy wrappers, empty cups and food bags with you until you can dispose of them properly and recycle whenever possible.  Please.  A little effort goes a long way-  for all of us.

A Very Hot Cup Of Chocolate

I was at a fall harvest party when I was around 12 years old and wanted some hot chocolate.  I walked up to the huge barrel of hot chocolate sitting outside under the trees, grabbed my cup, and dipped the ladle into the endlessly thick foamy marshmallow froth.  "Wow," I thought, "this looks really, really good."  Little did I know, the froth was so thick that it hid the steam bubbling off the surface of the scalding hot chocolate beneath.  I filled my cup to the brim, tilted my head back and chugged it.

Time stood still.  In an instant, my long anticipated moment of joyful chocolate bliss turned into a five star alarm of shock and awe.  I spit out the hot chocolate in a flash of pain.  It was so completely scalding hot I thought I disintegrated my tongue.  I ran into the kitchen writhing in pain and disbelief, opened up the freezer door, grabbed a tray of ice cubes, twisted the cubes loose and began melting them, one by one, on the surface of my scorched tongue.  Each one seemingly melted in seconds.  After melting almost an entire tray of ice cubes, I regained my composure and assessed the damage in the bathroom mirror.  I slowly opened my hot chocolate hole.  Sure enough, my tongue was covered in white blisters.

Needless to say I’ve been extremely cautious of hot drinks ever since.  To this day I prefer my hot chocolate, hot tea, hot coffee and hot soup warm.  Yes, warm.  There's no need to reheat it.  Thanks.