Making Friends Require Effort

Unfortunately just liking a post or sending a “Happy Birthday” every year is not it.

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $4,000 Vacation + $1,000 VISA eGift Card

The Ultra High End - $200 HomeChef eGift Card

The Superpremium - The Harmony of the Seas

The Premium Core - Bowery Residents’ Committee

The Accessible Core - Making Friends Require Effort

The Affordable Luxury - The Next Bespoke Prize?

The Everyday Luxury - Winners!

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $4,000 Vacation Voucher + $1,000 in VISA eGift Cards [ARV $5,012]

• Odds: For every 660 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) vacation bundle Prize

• Contest Period: January 3, 2024 at 10 AM CST to January 30, 2024 at 10 PM CST

See Issue 1 for more content about The Bespoke Prize.

The Ultra High End

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $200 HomeChef eGift Card [ARV $200]

• Odds: For every 130 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) HomeChef eGift Card

• Contest Period: January 17, 2024 at 10 AM CST to January 23, 2024 at 10 PM CST

This week’s focus is social wealth. You may be wondering how HomeChef relates to being social. Well, HomeChef unlike CookUnity, is a meal subscription that sends you the ingredients and recipes but you have to do the cooking. This is also why they tend to be a more inexpensive than CookUnity.

However, this last step allows for a really good dinner date or social gathering for you and friends. By taking all the thought out of preparation, you can have ingredients sent to your home the day before a get together and have a nice cooking social with a few close friends.

Best of all, in case you don’t plan on having cooking socials every week, you’ll have inexpensive, yet gourmet meals ready to be made.

Personally, I love cooking so HomeChef takes some fun away for me. But if you are a novice chef, don’t have a lot of time to gather ingredients, or just want to try something new, yet easy, HomeChef really does provide quick and easy recipes that use techniques to make the meals delicious. Plus if you win the gift card, why not try it out and bring some family or friends over to help you cook it.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is the Harmony of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean Oasis-class ship. This is one of the biggest ships in the world and there is so much to do on it. My family and I were just on this cruise last week and it was amazing. However, I can definitely tell a few first-time cruisers that were having a hard time. Let me give a few tips specifically for the Harmony of the Seas.

1. Like any cruise, bring sea-sickness remedies. As big of a ship as it is, we had quite a few people in our party get seasick, but thanks to remedies to include prescription seasickness medicine, everyone survived.

2. There are many after-dinner shows that are complimentary to reserve. Reserve them all immediately on the Royal app once you have access onboard. They fill up very quickly, especially the earlier time slots. Plus getting an earlier reservation gives you a chance to see it later, in case they cancel it, which they did multiple times during our trip due to weather. The water and ice skating shows were definitely the family favorites.

3. For those looking for a relaxing vacation. You don’t have to skip all or any of the port of calls, but if you do skip one, or come back much earlier than the departure time at port, you will get a wonderful surprise. The entire ship will feel like it has been emptied for you. Most pools will have little to no people in it. All the lounge chairs are yours to pick from. And all the dining areas become your own dinner room. Personally, I like staying onboard, especially on such a large ship, at least for one day, to really relax.

4. For adults going without kids, don’t forget you can dine in areas without kids, such as: Solarium (adult only pool area, restaurant and bar), room service (a single fee for unlimited amounts of food to your room), deck 6 bar area is completely empty during breakfast and lunch (they have premium furniture), premium dining spaces (some may have a few kids, but generally all adults) or you can take any food to any location to eat.

5. For early risers, take advantage of the views and emptiness of the 15th and 16th decks before 9am. No one is really up on those decks at that time and you get a breathtaking view of the ocean and sky. It’s also the best time for taking keepsake photos.

6. Lastly, tipping is always a variable that new cruisers tend to overlook until the very end. On many cruise lines, adding prepaid gratuities at the time of booking is becoming more common and I recommend doing so when you book your cruise. It may make like you’re spending more upfront, but really it keeps you from overspending at the end. Plus, you can always go to the Guest Services onboard to remove/add/adjust gratuities at any time.

These are just a few tips. If you are cruising in the future and have questions, don’t be afraid to email me to get some insight. I’ve cruised a few times now and have traveled a lot and have a few tips I could pass on.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is the non-profit organization, Bowery Residents’ Committee (BRC). Like All Hands and Hearts non-profit from issue 5, a lot of research has gone in to vet a great non-profit:

1. They received the highest rating of A from charitywatch.org under the topic of Housing & Housing Equity Charities. Like before, just for reference the Susan G. Komen and American Heart Association doesn’t even show up on their top-rated charities list, meaning they received a lower score than B+.

2. They only take $11 to raise $100. This is really good when it comes to non-profits.

3. 89% of its funds are used for its charitable programs.

4. Lastly, the executives of BRC pay ranges from $320K-$390K. This may seem a lot but compared to the CEO of American Heart Association that gets paid $3.1M/year, it really shows the difference in charity funds utilization.

I’ve volunteered in homeless shelters since high school and it really shows what a difference a great charity can do for people. I’ve seen families go from homeless, to shelter, to apartment then to a small home. Before I left those volunteer roles, I was thanked for the support and camaraderie I gave to the families that were at the shelter. I later met the parents of a family that was at the shelter a few years later and was able to catch up.

They told me how the time I spent playing basketball with their kids, eating meals together and spending time at the shelter during their time homeless, was some of the most memorable times of their lives. They let me know they’re in a better place and that I will always have a home with them if I ever needed one.

If you have time, it can be an amazing experience. However, that’s not the only thing you can do. You can also donate to these non-profits so they can continue their work. This is the donation link here so you can donate if you are moved to do so.

To show support to BRC’s and Ducky Tran’s commitment to support the community at-large, I have a proposed offer:

Deal #1: Any member that forwards their donation receipt to me by January 31, 2024, [email protected], I will match the donation on February 1, 2024 up to $1,000 total.

The Accessible Core

Making Friends Require Effort

It has been proven that having strong close relationships can protect from depression. Also, that deep conversations make people less awkward towards each other and build strong connections with each other. Yet, a large majority of the public still think “liking”, posting “Happy Birthday” on a social wall, or texting a friend now-and-then is making an effort to be social with someone.

Well, sorry to break to those people, it isn’t. This research shows how 24% and 40%, respectively, of couple say social media and spending excessive time on smartphones bother them. And 51% of committed adults say that their partners are distracted by their cellphones while in a conversation with each other.

There’s a saying that a smile can be extremely contagious, that’s why you should always put a smile on to brighten the atmosphere around you. But did you know a frown takes more muscles than a smile? Regardless, both smiles and frowns are contagious and can change the mood of those that interact with you.

Unfortunately, behind the screen of a smartphone, a text or a social media post, you can’t see these expressions, you can’ t have deep verbal conversations with non-verbal cues and the duration of interactions between one another tends to be very short.

All this have resulted in a world, even though so close due to the internet, is yet so far from each other in sense of relationships. More people are suffering from depression than ever in history, more people have anxiety in meeting others, and more people are have many friends yet very few relationships.

But to change how many people live and grown up can be a daunting task, so instead of going 180 degrees all at once, let me propose some slow changes that can help you build real relationships:

1. Video messaging versus text messaging, the visual cues actually make the receiver feel the same emotions the sender is portraying.

2. On a friend’s birthday, call them and talk about how you met each other and how you became friends. This is a topic rarely spoken about between friends to each other, this ice breaker will actually make a stronger bond.

3. When you’re out and meet a stranger, don’t be afraid to talk beyond the weather and what brings them there. Topics like what they do for a living, any hobbies they have or what their favorite drink is and why are sufficient to break the ice, remove the awkwardness and build a relationship that may be long-term.

4. When eating with your partner or friends, agree to set your phones aside for just 10 minutes. Then break the ice as in tip #2 or #3. Soon 30 minutes will pass and you won’t even notice your phone.

The efforts to take these steps and more will be rewarding as your friendships and companionship will be more fulfilling and meaningful. It’s also a good way to see if the other person is putting in effort. If you feel that they are not, point them to this article so they can read what you have.

At the end, it takes real effort to make, keep and maintain a relationship, so don’t think a few clicks here and there means your social media “friends” are truly your friends. And yes, it takes effort from both sides.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 8 Community Poll Results

I received more responses this week so the polls are more accurate.

1. 50% of you chose texting as your preferred form of communication, while the other half picked in-person/phone call.

2. 50% of you chose watching shows is how you relax while the other half picked sleeping/other. I was surprised that no one picked eating, that’s mine.

3. Thank you to everyone that voted, you indicated the sections don’t need improvement. We will check up on this again in the future.

This Week’s Community Poll

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Look at the couple that won back-to-back weeks during issues 4 and 5. Kevin and Huyen finally got a photo with their prizes. (Kevin elected to get the cash prize instead of the Lockly):

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: homechef