Walk: Chinese Festival 2008

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing
That's a fact,
It's a thing we can't deny
...

Yes, it is one week after the 2008 Chinese New Year (February 7), so why was there a Chinese New Year festival now? The simple answer is because Chinese people have something else to do on the weekend of Chinese New Year. Some Chinese people visit their family members, and some have a family gathering just like Thanksgiving weekend. Then there are some who go to Las Vegas to try their luck. You can go see it for yourself, if you don't believe it.

This weekend, once again, I did not bring any camera to a local trip. In my personal experience, photography is great for capturing the moment; however, being a photographer takes away the indulgent feeling from the personal experience. Anyways, this festival had plenty of tents selling ethnic foods, fruit drinks, and unnecessary products. In the crowded street, one prominent sector of economy seemed to be missing from the picture. Big name bank. I did not see any booth for the CitiBank, Washington Mutual, or Bank of America. The only well known banks there were HSBC and Wells Fargo. The Chinese banks made their appearance as usual. By the way, I did see JCPenny booth, which is strange.

Several hours later, and several bags of free gifts in my hands, I came to the corner where a parade was going by. Watching it, I came to realized that in the last 16 years, I never been to a Chinese festival in location before, even though it is less than fifteen minutes drive. In fact, I remember only two occasions, where I was in a Chinese New Year festival.

Sad, isn't it? To not take time to live a life.
Sad, isn't it? To not seize the given opportunity.
Sad, isn't it? To not respond back to a genuine message.

But it is not that bad, because I came to realize and there is still time. I could have been to the Belgium Beer festival today, but today wasn't that bad.

Walk: Sears

Last couple of weekends were full of rain, so I didn't get a chance to do any outdoor photography. As the forecast had it, Saturday was supposed to be sunny. Saturday. Sunny it is, at around 85 Fahrenheit with no cloud or wind(in another word, hot). Now, due to the long work hours on Friday and plenty of chores for me to do today, I decided not to do the usual photography weekend. Instead, I would walk on an unplanned route. This unplanned-route idea is basically to pick a busy street, and walk as far as possible. The route for today was six miles long crossing two cities.

As usual, I took the liberty to do some side trips into the local stores and point of interests as I pass them. There were few unique things to see on today's trip, including a cemetery that is over 100 years old, and a mini Statue of Liberty. However, one of a more interesting place for today's walk happened to be Sears. Yes, Sears.

It was right after I came out of a local owned furniture-electronic store that I walked into this mysterious Sears. It took me about thirty seconds, and a 360 degrees scan of the whole place before I realized something seems wrong with this Sears. Lots of clothes and no electronic appliances in sight. I had been to several locations of Sears before, and there were electronic appliances in every corners and shelves. Yet, the only high tech goods they offer here were TVs and DVDs. I strolled around the places for five minutes before leaving. It was only after I walked out to the parking lot and took a good look at the sign before I realized the reason for the unusual products selection. I laughed as I read the sign...

Sears Essentials

The essentials said it all. After several hours of sightseeing later, I came home and googled for "Sears Essentials". Found out that this is another branch of Sears that expands into the female consumers market and the fashion sector. Essentially, it means that I probably would not go in there again.

Links:
- Sears Essentials

Visa Credit Card: Collision Damage Waiver

Last week wasn't a great week. Why? Well...

• Heavy rain fall on the weekend, so no photography.
  
• Sickness (cold and cough). A big thank to my co-workers.
• Lakers without Bynum continues to lose.
  
• Car break down. Gak, Gak, Gak.
• Pushing a dead car to the auto shop in the rain.
• Car break down again one day later. Same sound. Gak, Gak, Gak.
• Getting the car repaired in the morning, and worked from noon to night.
• After the second fixes, my car making the same sound on Friday mourning.
  

Now, to add to the string of bad lucks, I had an important presentation on the late morning of the same Friday! I decided to not gamble with my car, and went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car. The store did not have an economy car available($25 per day), so I got a standard car($35 per day). In my opinion, renting a car for $35/day wasn't a bad deal, until I looked at the insurances. There were three insurance coverages that totaled to $24. To be honest, I did know that my Visa card has some rental car insurance, but I was not sure of the detail. Being short on time, and ignorance of my own insurance coverage on rental car, I agreed to all the coverages just to be on the safe side.

After I returned the rental car, I got curious and decided to investigate Visa's insurance coverage on rental car. Few hours of researching, I found something really neat about Visa's coverage. Now, the following applied to Visa credit card only, because Master Card and AmEx have different policies.

Most Visa card has Collision Damage Waiver(CDW), sometimes called Loss Damage Waiver(LDW), that does a full coverage on your rental car. However, note that there are differences between renting a car outside your country, and within your own country.

If you rent a car within your own country, Visa's CDW is a secondary coverage, which means Visa will pay an additional coverage to the primary coverage(your auto insurance). For example, if the damage is worth $5,000, and the primary insurance covers only $3,000, then Visa will pay the additional $2,000. Of course, this assumed that the car worth more than $5,000 to begin with. Now, there are few restrictions before this Visa's coverage kicks in.

• Must use Visa card to pay for the car rental.
• Does not cover if renting more than 15 consecutive days.
• Must declined auto rental company's CDW or LDW option.
• Does not cover expensive car like Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, etc.
• A reasonable care of the car. No alcohol or drug. No intention of hitting. Blah, blah, blah.

Now, should you ever get into an accident with rented car, there are few things you must do within the time limit...

• Contact Visa Benefit Administrator within 45 days of the collision or loss.
• Complete and send the Visa Auto Rental CDW Claim Form within 90 days of the damage, even if other required documents are not available yet.

For the official and complete detail on Visa's CDW coverage, including how Visa's CDW works on foreign country, click here. So, at the end of the day, if I had been paying more attention to my auto insurance policy, and Visa's CDW coverage, I could have saved myself up to $24. Was it a lot of money? Not really. I would have saved $10 on CDW. The presentation was more important to me on that day. Nonetheless, an important lesson to myself here is to read the fine print of these policies and benefits on my free time. This time it is only $24, but next time, it could be hundreds or thousands.

Link:

• Visa Card Benefit - Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver - Personal
• USA Today article on rental car insurance (Dec. 10, 2007)