Foreign Perspectives

It’s the time of year when the shops fill up with people returning unwanted Christmas gifts in search of the things that they really wanted so perhaps you’re after that perfect watch in place of the one that wasn’t anything like the one yo received.

Sports and divers watches are always popular but sometimes it’s difficult to know where to look to find that one that’s just perfect for your needs and that looks the part too. The Technomarine watches range is a make that’s less commonly seen around but no less good than some of the more popular ones. Since it’s not quite so popular, chances are that you’ll get a lot more watch for your money than you’d expect and it’s much more likely to be unique to you among your circle of friends.

That “more for your money” aspect is probably the most significant. In many cases second line manufacturers feel that they have to try that little bit harder through offering more features for the same money as their competitors or by offering keener pricing or, particularly these days, both. Which adds up to significant benefits for their customers.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Trees are one of the more economical ways to add considerable value to your home and one of those that will give you the benefit of that added value whilst you’re still there.

Although you can let your Fig trees keep growing upwards to typically reach something like 30 feet it’s also possible to trim them into the shape of a shrub or bush if you’d rather have something more manageable. That makes them one of those “trees” that can fit into any size of garden.

The shelf life of the fruits isn’t great so they’re not commonly available in shops but with your own fig tree you’ll not need to worry about that. There’s loads of choice too with quite a range of flavours amongst the varieties.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Most of the booking websites provide a mechanism for guests to comment on and score the performance of the accommodation which they’ve used recently.

In most cases the comments are approved by the booking site before they’re published so you only get to see the relatively sensible ones as they weed out those that are from another planet. For example, the commentary that we received a year ago that criticised the “ancient boxy hairdryer” in the bathroom; in fact it was a reasonably modern room heater. Or the couple that wrote quite an extensive critique of their stay that rarely touched base with reality and for which it turned out that all their problems stemmed from them not having changing the time on their watch.

However, as well as the commentary there’s generally a scoring system in place which can sometimes have quite bizzare numerical effects. For example, on one site we’ve the vast majority of scores 7 and over yet because of two 2.5s from a single group we end up with an overall 5. It’s scoring bias like that which makes a nonsense of the scoring. In a large hotel with hundreds of comments one or two low scores disappear of course but when you’ve only a few dozen comments just one disgruntled customer can really throw the overall result.

Popularity: 2% [?]