Breaking the habit

Last weekend, despite heavy snowfall, my wife and I decided to undertake an excursion across the border into the wilds of Ohio. After an hour on the winding wooded roads of South Eastern Ohio we made it to our destination safely, the Southern Park Mall, where we spent the evening shopping. Well, sort of.

The first store we stopped in was Gap, where we found a cute red hat with a pom-pom on the top for Heidi. On top of being cute it was on the clearance rack for under $5! Needless to say, we didn't think twice. It wasn't until after we had made the purchase that we even thought to look where it was made. Sure enough, Made in China. Fail.

As you can imagine, we made sure to check every label from there on out. Out of everything we looked at we only found one item that was not made in China. A brand of shoes called Born that is made in Mexico. This adventure taught us a valuable lesson though. Ingrained habits are hard to break. Because we rarely buy anything besides food, my shopping habits have reverted to the way they were before our Made in China experiment. When I do go to buy something, I don't bother with where it was made, how it was made, or anything besides my desire for it. Its a sort of tunnel vision.

Then I got to wondering...how much of my life do I live like that? How often am I blind to the majestic and complex world in which we live? How often do I ignore the motivation and feelings of the people around me and focus only on getting what I want from them? Why am I content to be unaware of what is actually happening around me?

I don't want to live that way. It seems I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on all of this.

HTC ftw!

This is the generic message from each of the companies I contacted:

Regarding your concern, XXX has manufacturing plants in many countries around the world. XXX models are not usually manufactured in a particular plant, but in more than one manufacturing facility at the same time. For this reason, it is not possible to determine in which country a unit is manufactured beforehand. However, please note that XXX is a company committed to quality in all the steps of the manufacturing process. All our facilities undergo rigorous quality assurance processes to ensure that all products comply with XXX's high quality standards.

Pretty much says, "Our phones are made/put together in China!" So as you can imagine, getting the following message:

Thank you for contacting HTC Technical Support via email about where our devices are manufactured and put together.

I am happy to provide you that information. All our devices are manufactured and assembled in Taiwan. I hope this helps to answer your question about HTC devices.

*w00t* This means the Droid Eris and the Nexus One are good! Now watch as I don't have the money to get a new phone :).

The Phone Problem

As a result of leaving my cell phone charger in Lancaster I have been without a phone for the last week. This brought up an interesting question. If something were to happen to my phone in the next year, would I be able to buy a replacement? Being hopelessly attached to the evil little thing, this quarry has sent me all over the internet for the last few days, desperately trying to find a phone that wasn't produced or constructed in China.

The results have not been pretty so far. So far I have found that Blackberry, LG, Samsung and Motorola all produce phones in China. I have e-mails in to Nokia and HTC, but the little information I've found on their production doesn't leave me hopeful.

Interestingly enough, the iPhone is made of parts produced in Japan and Taiwan, but those parts are then shipped to China to be assembled and packaged. Ah well, just another reason not to jump on the wagon.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for HTC, a Taiwanese company, because they make Google's new Nexus One.

Chances are I'll be using the same phone for the next year, but that may not be a bad thing. With me going back to school and Heidi's debt to pay off I probably shouldn't be spending money on a new phone anyway.

On a related note, if you find any cool "Not Made in China" products or spot things I should avoid, drop me a note. It;d be a big help.

Not Made in China

I have recently been talking with various people about the advantages (and disadvantages) of Localization verses Globalization. In an effort to get a proper understanding of the hold that China has on the United States' economy I would like to spend the next year buying only products that are not produced or packaged in China.

My loving wife has agreed (on the condition that it doesn't get out of hand) and so we are good to go. This is the plan. As of January 11th, 2010, Heidi and I will no longer purchase anything that has been made or packaged in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba or North Korea (the surviving Communist countries-I'll be referring to their products collectively as CCM-Communist Country Made). Over the next week I am going to be doing some research to try and come up with lists of safe products and brands as well as delving a bit deeper into the economic and social implications buying non-CCM products will have.

This idea of Localization is really catching my fancy so I'll be doing a bit more research on that as well.

Blessings.