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Doesn't guarantee that. Just saying.

Fcuk Google, Ask Me!

Fuck Google, Ask Me!

Seen the tee at the Camden market, bought the tee, done the tee.

Always wondered if some genius at Google thought this up and conveniently lent to the tee-maker. As far as I am concerned this is the best piece of brand communication I have ever seen in my futile two decades in brand communications. Futile for me as I see so many pieces of creative genius so simple but great, and always ask myself, why the fuck didn’t I think of that.

If the word fuck offends you, my apologies. Please bear with.

Back to Google, how much the Internet and Googling anything, has become so part and parcel of our life. Facebook. Twitter. So many social media platforms. If you have a computer or laptop, it’s considered unfashionable to not have your own site/blog.

Digital technology has taken over our lives. Photographers have been created overnight. Have expensive digital camera, look and click. See immediately the result. Imagine one to be Art Wolfe. Post to the web.

Use smart phone; take pictures and videos and post to the web in the touch of a button.

Everyone has become digital communicators.

The providers and search engines continue to innovate to make the technology faster and easier. Easier to understand. Apple and their range of communications tools a best example.

All this has happened during the past seven years. From 2006, when social media really took off.

I am sitting here now. Typing this blog post on my Macbook Pro. Listening to BBC news with an occasional peek at the TV. After this post, dinner, and enter Sky demand. Watch the football, then scan movie library to find something good. Even the TV’s gone completely digital. More now a computer than a television.

Advertising Agencies take note. If you can see where this is all going. The Internet. Everyone is an expert, everyone.

You don’t have to die to become extinct. You can just become obsolete.

Fuck Google, Ask Me!

Cricket goes mad in March

Cricket goes mad in March.

Sri Lanka the paradise island in the Indian Ocean truly celebrates madness in the month of March.

Fathers and mothers alike finally prepare for their life’s dream of watching their teenage sons go to battle in the longest battle of all in Sri Lanka. 134 years in fact.

New outfit are stitched or bought by teenage girls. Them and their mothers giggling in excitement. The mothers relieving the excitement of their youth.

Long walks in the evening, holding hands, kisses stolen under a tree, at a friend’s house…

The daughters to watch the young men battle, and hopefully land a nice boyfriend. A first kiss, a first slow dance with a boy…

For the young men, this is what they have practised for all their lives.

On the roads, in the fields, in back gardens, on the beach, anywhere with a patch of green and sunshine.

They’re the ones who practised for hours, until muscles ached, callouses came from hitting that ball inside a sock tied to a rope hanging from a tree with their cricket bats.

Yes, I am talking about cricket. Willow bats, cherry shined red leather balls, oval grass fields, six stumps, four bails, the long boundary rope; twenty-two young men in full white, two umpires and we’re ready for cricket.

Which Sri Lanka took from the British, and made their own.

In March especially when Sri Lanka’s cricket nurseries, the Public schools ready for their annual battles of cricket. Held in the three day format these battles of cricket are popularly know as a Big Match.

The longest in Sri Lanka’s is between Royal College and St. Thomas’s College. The RoyTho annual encounter is firmly etched in Sri Lanka’s social calendar.

Celebrated the most by its students and the Old Boys.

An Old Boy myself, after many moons, I decided to observe this great tradition after 28 years. In March 2012, I made the RoyTho pilgrimage again.

The tropical heat in March, a cacophony of sound, a sea of school boys in white, blue yellow and blue, blue black and blue flags of every size, supporter tents of every type imaginable, the Royal Taverners the most original to a general sense of overall bohemia, everyone hugging and greeting each other, the SSC cricket ground was rocking.

The old boys exclusive tents all with their private bars, DJ, Band and trumpet band were all vying with each other to see who could create maximum sound and effect. Most tents with the luxury of mist fans to keep bay the tropical heat, cold towels at intervals and my tent the marvellous alcoholic fruit punch made with great reverence by the good Captain Sopaka, an ardent and loyal Old Royalist. The very gentlemen who lured me back all the way from England to see this great tradition.

The cheers of R – O – Y – A – L resound from the boys tent.

The Thomian boys’ tent explodes in reply.

The Stables tent is the most revered as it holds all the young looking mothers and their teenage daughters. Many mothers the wife of old boys. The more revered are the ones whose husbands have played the game for college.

Suddenly a huge roar fills the ground. Eclipsing even all the sound produced by the DJ’s and bands.

The two umpires stride to the middle.

Eleven boys in full white run on to the field.

Two knights in full white, gloved, padded, helmet on and carrying their trusty willows stride in confidently to bat.

The umpire tosses the red cherry to the Captain. He tosses it to his opening fast bowler.

Lets Play!

The Royal Thomian, RoyTho has begun.

My flights booked, ticket bought and outfits all planned. Even three pairs of shoes for the three days of cricket, camaraderie and fun.

Come on Royal!

When Harry met Curry

Dee Dee, some delicious scents come from your house, mate. (Authentic Aussie accent, my neighbour three doors away is an actual.)

Yes while whiling away the one of many Monday early nights, after of course some nice lamb curry with buttered fresh bread, I ponder the fate of curry in Harry-land. No ill fate, I must hasten to add, but the popularity curry has earned amongst the local populace in be now considered ‘in’. Like men in the kitchen.

In fact here’s nothing sexier than a man who can cook a good curry in the kitchen. If he is by some strange twist of fate also bearing facial connections to any one of the SAARC countries, much better. The Best.

Curry Houses are far easier to find far and wide in England, than I may hasten to add than the great British institution, The Pub. London, Manchester and Birmingham boast of curry houses surpassing those in the SAARC countries.

As the young English say often in praise, ‘sick’ or ‘wicked’ or either ‘sick-wicked’ followed by fucking shite, you cunts. Curry is now sick-wicked! And fucking shite you cunts, in’it?

Harry finally met Curry. No really. Yes.

Cobra Indian beer brewed in England. Making friends was never easier. 

‘Chancellor eats horse shit’

Tax laws out-dated by 100 years. EU countries sharing and adopting best practices. Multinationals with a dubious reputation in paying the proper taxes of the country they do business in. George Osbourne must be the most boring person in the world.

The BBC drones on in the background. Beef contaminated with Horsemeat, the story rages on.

Early Saturday morning. All morning bathroom pleasantries done, first coffee for the day and I sit on my proverbial leather couch whiling my insomniac time in the fruitless pursuit of inspiration and understanding the ills of humankind. Thoughts filter from BBC news on the telly, to writing this, to the need for another cup of coffee . Coffee means body movement and I am way too comfortably settled into the couch. The couch and I are one.

So back to this horsemeat story. As the story unravels, it’s clear that horsemeat has contaminated many beef food products in the UK. The debate is whether this is a EU wide crime syndicate sponsored crime vs. a bunch of abattoirs making some ‘holiday’ money. Either way what’s alarming is the stoic silence of the supermarkets that had these contaminated beef products on their shelves. Do they continue to do so? What assurances have they given their customers that every single beef product sold in their supermarkets has been checked?

For someone like me who has not eaten any beef or beef product for almost two decades I find the fundamental premise wrong. If you eat a cow, why not eat a horse too? Don’t get me wrong I am not a holier than thou vegan. I love my pork, in every form from bacon to pork belly to crackling. So if someone offered me say a horse curry, yes, I would try it. The horse is anyway mighty fine looking animal and a cow I am sad to say looks silly.

You may ask me then why don’t you eat cow? But you see, my decision not to eat cow is by choice. I would be mighty pissed off if say someone told me all the delicious venison, lamb and pork sausages I have consumed in the past all were contaminated by a dominant amount of horsemeat.

So I guess I see what you mean. Half past seven, I have given in to the need for another cup of coffee. Post this before I go. Enjoy your weekend; go, and go, go now, quickly!