Valentines Day and Inelastic Supply Curves

As I drove to work this morning the radio was filled with horror stories of Valentine's Day upsets. Most sounded like a product of the sudden spike in demand for goods and services (flowers, nice dinners, hotel reservations) coupled with the fact that most vendors cannot adequately increase supply to meet this demand for a single day. So what happens?

Restaurants fit 20% more tables into the same space and operate with 20% less staff while offering a reduced number of menu options and call it "prix fix."

Florists increase prices by 50% and never seem to have enough of those honkin'-big Ecuadorian roses that you saw last spring.

Why? Because on February 14 the demand curve for flowers and restaurant reservations shifts dramatically, and temporarily, to the right...much farther and much faster than the supply curve can shift. Prices rise. Quality drops like the fickle souffles that restaurant general managers try to sell once a year (and this is not an area where one can decouple selling and delivery.)

And to complicate things further, expectations rise.

A friend of mine taught me a useful formula:

Happiness = (Reality) / (Expectations)

So in many ways, celebrating Valentine's Day on February 14 is a setup for an upset.

This is not always the case. For those readers who celebrated a Valentine's Day on February 14 that met or exceeded expectations...your significant other should be doubly acknowledged.

If your celebration did not meet expectations, I invite you to reevaluate where the miss happened and consider how many factors were within your significant other's control (on that day.)

And to those who are looking for an alternative to the above slippery-sloped supply-side cycle - consider picking a different date to celebrate Valentine's Day. Travel schedules revealed this trick to my wife and I as we have been in different states/countries on February 14 for the past two years. So we have celebrated Valentine's Day on alternate dates. It has been a lot of fun and substantially less stressful on us and our floral / cuisine partners. We really did discover this by chance, but I am kind of fond of it. This year we are celebrating on February 21. Next year...oh, that's a secret.

-HammerHead

Christmas in Ranthambore

We had Christmas dinner with Ateeq's family in Ranthambore, or actually, a village just outside of Ranthambore. What a meal! His wife and mother fed us "Grandma Holland Style." They stuffed us. Mutton kebabs, chicken curries, mutton curries and biryanis and...palak paneer! (Think of creamed spinach with fried chunks of fried ricotta cheese - my favorite Indian dish.) All dishes were wonderful, home-cooked, from scratch and bottomless. I stopped short of taking the last of the palak paneer on its first passing. Ateeq's wife, Nilu, laughed. It reappeared refilled twice that night and would have a third time had I not protested that I had no ability to eat any more. Bread operated the same way - fresh baked and replaced before it could get cold.



As amazing as the food was, the most significant feature of the evening was the warmth of our welcome. Ateeq's entire family (less his brother, who was also leading a tour group) greeted us as if we were old friends. Nilu gave Lindsay and my mother fabric for traditional North Indian salwar kurtas. I scratched my head briefly and wondered, "How do we convert this beautiful fabric into garments?" The family's tailor arrived ten minutes later to take their measurements and answer my question. Their garments were ready the next evening.



I will delve into observations and opinions on the role of religion in India in a later entry, but for now I will just say that I will never forget having Christmas dinner with a Muslim family in a Hindu country.