I am going for Lasik. Nope I am not a vain person, but the truth is… I want to look older. So when someone told me that I look more matured without my specs, I just couldn’t help but jump at it. I have tried to look older ever since I was in uni.. when I realised that it was really difficult to get people to seriously pay attention to you when you look like a secondary school boy…..
For those of you who do not know me… I have a very youngish (is there such a word) face, but no… I am not young. I have thousands of white hair sprouting out all over my scalp. I cannot do enough pull-ups to pass my IPPT. I have a big belly…. which my auntie commented was bigger than my pregnant da sao. I have a grossly wrinkled neck due to extensive scratching since young (eczema).
Somehow, while the rest of my body has been ruthlessly ravaged by the passing of time, my face was left out in the entire ageing process.
In an effort to look more matured, I had tried:
- leaving a moustache
- perming my hair
Well, the fact that I do not have a moustache or permed hair now shows that those actions did not work. A moustache makes me look like a coloured wolf, while the only comment I got from curly hair was: “You woke up late this morning and forgot to bathe?”
Yes… I needed a more effective way to look older… and Lasik shall be my answer.
Expensive
For the few friends who know me well, they will realise that I am a bit giam (stingy). Somehow, I do not really like to spend money on frivolous and unnecessary thing. For one, I love throwing away things (which I do not use) to make more room for myself. As such, I try not to buy too many things. I see a lot of things in terms of their value and depreciation, i.e.
If we buy a pair of shoe and wear it almost everyday, then even if it costs a hundred dollars, each day of wearing effectively only costs you 30 cents. As such, it is extremely good value for money. And if you buy a shirt, it only makes sense if I have a chance to wear in many, many times… as the more often I wear it, the lower will be the variable costs of wearing the shirt. As such, I am very willing to spend money on a shirt which I will wear often.
However, girls think differently.
They tend to spend 500 dollars on a pair of shoes which they will only wear on special occasions. Actually, they like to spend 500 dollars on a pair of discounted shoes (original price is over a thousand dollars). By doing so, they feel that they have gotten a great deal, and have effectively earned 500 dollars. And as such shoes are to be worn only on special occasions, the chances of it being worn is maybe 20 times in its entire lifetime? This puts the depreciation value of the shoe at about 25 SGD per occasion. And 20 times is generally an over estimate when you take into account the number of variety of shoes women have……
I have always gotten distracted while writing my blog. Actually, the main intention of today’s entry has more a reflection of what my friend Lee Chuen Yang said. He went for Lasik and opted for the Junior Surgeon, instead of the more Senior Surgeon. He felt that for a simple surgery like Lasik, it does not make sense to pay a premium for the more experienced surgeons (since most of the shaping of the cornea is automated by some computer.. the surgeons only job seems to be flipping your cornea back to its orignal location…. )
Honestly, I agree with him… and would also like to go for the cheapest thing possible. I mean… if a simple operation like this cannot be handled by the junior practitioner, then what can the junior practitioner handle? But anyway, despite my logical reasoning, I should be going for the senior practitioner and pay another 1k SGD premium for 2 reasons:
- girl i like (GIL) seems to require a smaller diamond ring. she has reduced her expectations by 50%, so suddenly I feel a lot richer!
- GIL wants me to go for the more expensive one as she finds it safer. So if anything screws up, at least can get a nice comforting hug.
But this is another story. A very interesting observation was when Chuen Yang said that the junior practitioner could only operate on one eye in a day, while the senior practitioner could operate on both eyes in a day. This reminded me about the concept of price discrimination which I read in “The Under Cover Economist” by Tim Harford.
Price discrimination is the concept of charging different prices to different customers. People in the service industry do it all the time. We look at a customer and see how much he is able to pay before deciding on the final cost of implementation. Generally bigger companies are more generous with their budget and as such will be quoted a higher price. The reason why price discrimination can be practiced in the service industry is because services are not fully open market. Purchase of service is unlike the purchase of commodity products whereby an apple from seller A is not very much differentiated from seller B. Services between different vendors have different advantages and fulfil different needs. Unique services, when sold by a very good salesman can capture the entire area below the demand curve.
This way of selling results in maximum profits. However, it is only possible in the services industry whereby each customer will be quoted individually based on his/her own specific requirements. In a commodity market place, retailers often has to set a few fix prices for his/her products. It is deemed both unfair and impractical to charge a poor man 1 dollar for his potato chip and charge a rich man 3 dollar for the same potato chip just because he can pay more.
In the product market, merchants try to perform price discrimination by segmenting their products. In software, the basic version will have limited functionality while the advanced version will have full functionality. It has been noted that software products is generally developed with the full version. Only upon the completion of development, will software vendors proceed to create limited editions of the software by writing codes to block out certain functionality. Software vendors have to deprive certain privileges of their poorer clients just to make the clients who are willing to pay for the full feature special. Theoretically, there is really no difference to the software company if it decides to give the poorer client access to the full suite. However, by doing so, even those who are willing to pay will be robbed of any incentive to pay more and will also go for the basic edition.
Likewise, Chuen Yang’s eye specialists has to adhere to a strange rule of only being able to operate on one eye at a time for junior practitioners just so that the advantages of being operated by the senior practitioners become more discernible. Apparently, the advantages of being operated on by a more senior staff is so negligible that the health care professionals have to use administrative hassle to differentiate their products! By putting a stupid rule like this, it just goes to show that the hospital themselves see little advantage to the consumer in being operated on by a more senior staff… and as such… has to inconvenience the lower paying customers to give some discernible advantage to the wealthier customers in engaging the senior practitioners.
This type of price discrimination in an effort to maximize profit harms society. Theoretically, our society will be better off by just setting a narrower price difference between the services of the 2 different type of consultants. Remove away all those “can only operate on one eye” administrative hassle and let the market determine the premium a more senior eye specialist should command.
If the general public find the senior eye specialist’s premium too high, more will opt for the junior specialists, thus jacking up the prices of the junior consultants and narrowing the margin. By introducing unnecessary administrative costs, the market becomes distorted.
However, price discrimination is not necessarily bad. Some price discrimination performed by the drug companies are in fact beneficial to the world. Drug research and development is an expensive process and poor nations cannot afford to pay for such costs. By allowing drug companies to sell their drugs at different rates to different countries, poor countries will be given a chance to have access to the product (as its production costs is low) even as the rich nations foot most of the R&D costs…..
Okay, that’s all folks… really late and got to do some real work…..