Blue Ant Thinking

beater bikes

2011-11-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

Of course, one of the things that I love about living in Amsterdam is the bike culture. I think its fantastic that the city centre streets are overrun by cyclists and that everyone rides one, regardless of weather or attire. I still have this enthusiasm for the bike culture even after a couple of good wipeouts, including a very impressive one last week where I was run off the road by a truck on the way to work. (Ban them on the Prinsengracht I say!)

One of the things I like the most is the complete lack of care and prestige that comes from one's bike. You see the most fashionable and wealthy people riding the worst, most beaten up bikes. It's almost a matter of pride that their old Gazelle is still ridable. As long as it rides, and doesn't make noise, it's all good.

Here's a photo of the bike rack outside my apartment. We don't live in a terribly low rent district, but you'd never know it from the junk that's outside.

A fact I recently learned - the Dutch spend more per household on interior design than any other European country. Yet they ride beater bikes and plain cars. An interesting culture that believes in good design and quality, as long as you don't show it outwardly.

Signs around me.

2011-11-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

I spotted this sign today about a block away from the office. It reminds me of the old SNL First CityWide Change Bank ad, which I can't link to because I live outside of the US and NBC doesn't share well. But if you do live in the US, check it.

I should go in and give it a try, so see if I'd get more than elsewhere. But something tells me they wouldn't have a sense of humour and wouldn't appreciate the thought.

Ajax = Manchester United?

2011-10-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm still pretty new to this town, so I can't claim to be a football fan yet, let alone an Ajax fan. (For non-Dutchies the Ajax are the Amsterdam football team. And the one that I've been told is a good bet to support.) But I do know that if you want to get to understand a city and its culture you need to go to their sporting events. So this evening I went online to try to buy some Ajax tickets.

I tend to use Google Chrome as my primary web browser because it's got a tool that translates all the Dutch pages into English automatically. This is good, most of the time, but it can be challenging because some of the translations can be a little off. For example, yesterday it kept changing the letters UK to NL, which is a rather important distinction. I guess the software has the concept of a country down, but not the idea that differentiating between countries is important.

So tonight, when I pulled up the Ajax page this is what I found in the ticket purchasing section:

I couldn't figure out why they'd be advertising for Man U matches. But hey, if Manchester was coming to town to play Ajax that's a match I'd be interested in seeing. But then I clicked on the "show original text" button and this is what I got.

No mention of Manchester United at all. It appears that Google Chrome has translated the local football club's name into that of Manchester's storied franchise. Fortunately, I'm not really a fan yet, otherwise I'd likely be apoplectic. This is the equivalent of changing the Vancouver Canucks into the Detroit Redwings, without any indication that some great mistake had been made.

Now, I know not to trust Google for my translations. But UK to NL and Ajax to Man U seem like pretty crucial nuances. One would think that, with all their ridiculous brainpower, they could figure this one out.

Parisienne Signage

2011-10-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

Colleen and I spent last weekend in Paris. It was Colleen's first time, so we did all the proper touristy things - The Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Pompidou Centre.

I love walking around Paris. It's an absolutely beautiful city, with stunning views and buildings around every corner.

On our adventures there were a couple of signs that I particularly liked. This first one was in Notre Dame. Apparently if you're carrying a lot of sins around with you, then you must be tired and need a seat. If you're not ready to confess, then you'll just have to carry on. (Apologies for the not great photo.)

Then there was this sign at the exit of a parking garage. If you're stylishly wearing a red scarf, hat and carrying your umbrella, then you run a major risk of being clobbered over the head. It's a risk that fashionable people have to take.

Got gas?

2011-07-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning I discovered that I had no hot water. I had a cold shower and went to work, hoping it would be working by the time I got home. When I returned home this evening my gas was still not working. I realized that it was probably time to figure out what the heck the card from the gas company that I got in the mail yesterday said.

I copied the notice into Google Translate. Here's what I got:

"Dear Sir Madam,

related work on the pipeline and / or replacing your gas meter, your gas supply has been interrupted. Before you can use gas again, it is necessary for the following acts:

a) close all faucets and open the device at the meter gashoofdkraan:
b) insert the gas, preferably the cooking stove. If there is no gas pressure mustact a. wait 15 minutes and repeat. Then continue with action b:
c) let the gas burn 5 minutes and make sure it really stays on (there is some airin the pipe have been);
d) fire up your other devices

If problems arise, the need to contact the National toringsnummer gas andelectricity, from 0800 to 9009. This number is available 24 hours a day."

With instructions like that for reconnecting your gas line, what could go wrong?

The Punisher - continued

2011-07-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

So not only is Gaudi the punisher, but Harley seems to have "appropriated" his image.

I spotted this while walking through the Zurich airport train station last weekend. What do you want to bet that Harley didn't pay full usage rights for this?

To those who wrote me asking "what the hell is the Punisher?" after my last post, I hope this inspires you to go look it up.

Gaudi is The Punisher

2011-07-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Colleen and I had a terrific weekend in Barcelona at the end of June.

One place we visited was one of the Gaudi designed homes - La Pedrera.

In the elevator / lighting shaft in the middle of the house was this window venting system combo.

Which I think looks remarkably similar to the logo used by The Punisher.

Coincidence? I doubt it. I think Gaudi was the original punisher.

(I never promised that my blog posts would all be good and meaningful.)

Dutch banking

2011-06-25T05:09:00.000-07:00

A key part of moving to a new country is getting a bank account set up.

In many places deciding who to bank with can be a tough decision because there are so many options. Fortunately, that's not a problem here, as there's only one bank in the country that has a web site and online banking available in English. So ABN AMRO it is.

Coming from Canada I actually find this somewhat amusing, since Dutch-based ING is pretty well established in Canada as a primarily web based retail bank offering services in English. But here in their home land it's Dutch or nothing. That's too bad, because I've kind of always liked the angry Dutch guy in the Canadian ING ads.

Of course, I do see opportunity in this situation, since I am the GM of a digital marketing company that builds web sites in lots of different languages on behalf of our clients. In fact, for one of our clients we're currently building a site that will be rolled out in over 80 regions. So if any Dutch bankers read my blog - call me, we can help.

There are many other interesting things about the Dutch retail financial sector that I'm still learning. Like how credit cards aren't really credit cards. And how the PIN card works. I'm sure I'll write about these later but, to be honest, I haven't figured them out myself yet. Which is a little scary, since I am using a Dutch credit card now.

But the one other adventure with Dutch banking that I just had for the first time today was dealing with online banking. Apparently just entering your account number and pin code isn't enough here. You also need to have your e-dentifier with you, to insert your card into when you log in, so that you can verify exactly who you are.

Now, this isn't the worst idea I've ever heard. It's a nice bit of added security. But it certainly does hamper the convenience of online banking. Now that we're in a "what you want, when you want it" digital era restricting the use of online banking to situations where you've actually got to have, on hand, a clunky device that's larger than most SmartPhones feels somewhat regressive. But, like the lack of English web sites, this feels to me more a market opportunity for competition than it is a real problem.

The other added challenge of the e-dentifier is that it doesn't come with instructions in English. That shouldn't be surprising, and the English portion of the web site should explain things, but it doesn't do that terribly well. After plugging the e-dentifier into my laptop with the supplied USB cable, I couldn't get it to do what the site said it should be doing. Only when I searched for other information did I learn that I shouldn't have plugged it in. The USB connection is completely unnecessary. So, why does it come with a USB cable? I have no idea.

But I eventually figured it out. I'm all set up and am semi-aware of my financial situation. Just one more step in getting set up in our new home.

Sunday morning garbage in Amsterdam

2011-06-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

A bit of a negative post today. Sorry to be a downer:

Amsterdam is such a beautiful city. I simply don't understand why they can't come up with a better way to deal with their trash.

On Sunday morning Colleen and I headed over to Dirk, our local supermarket, to take our recycling in. When we got there, we discovered a great pile of garbage strewn around the bins.

This is a result of the standard Amsterdam proces of garbage collection, whereby people just put plastic bags out on the street, for it to be collected periodically. Clearly, this process doesn't work very well.

I understand that just putting the garbage out on the street in plastic bags is a standard way to deal with it in many major cities around the world. It just seems so unhygenic and nasty. What about bins? What about garbage cans?

This is a picture perfect place. I don't really get why this garbage situation can't be easily solved.

The Way to Work

2011-06-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

I love my ride to work in the morning.

First, just riding to work seems terribly civilized. You arrive refreshed and more relaxed than normal. Of course, it doesn't hurt that I arrived here in June, not in the middle of winter.

One of the first things I pass is a mineral / fossil shop. It's been closed for most of the time that I've been here, so I haven't been in. And I can't imagine that they do a lot of business, being a rather niche category. But it's a wonderfully interesting shop window full of odd bits. I often think of my nephew Cameron and his passion for rocks and geology when I'm passing here.

Right after the fossil shop I cross over a canal. The water is so calm and peaceful. And on the way home there are often people out for evening boat rides with their friends, having little picnics as they go along.

A bit further along I pass the Rijksmuseum. I haven't been in here yet. I'm waiting for visitors, so I can visit with them for the first time. But I hear that it's pretty amazing.

In front of the Rijksmuseum is the apparently iconic I amsterdam sign. All day, every day, there are people posing on the sign. I don't know the history of it, but it's at the end of a long pond in a park. A nice piece to ride through on the way to work.

The bike lanes are so civilized. They're well marked, with their own traffic signs. Bikes seem to have the right of way over vehicles and pedestrians here. I've been told that on your bike you're in the right, even if you're in the wrong.

I cross another bridge just before work. Lots of tourist boats going out for the day. This bridge is a little higher, requiring a bit of a push at the end. (OK, a very small push. But with no gears it requires a small pedal.)

And then, I'm at work. The office is located at Max Euweplein, beside the Hard Rock Cafe and the Amsterdam Casino - So pretty touristy. There's a big outdoor chess board. In this photo there's no one playing, but during the day you get pretty big crowds. Or, at least, pretty big crowds for people watching an outdoor chess match.

All that takes between 5 and 10 minutes. Quick and easy. And, on a sunny day, it's a great way to get to the office. I'll let you all know more about the commute when winter comes and we've moved a bit further away.

Go play on the canal.

2011-05-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

Riding our new granny bikes around town yesterday we came across the most interesting location for a playground ever - across three moored barges. I love the Dutch approach to making the most out of every square foot of land, or pseudo-land as the case may be.

Probably hard to see in this photo, but the best part is the cage to climb between the middle and far-right barge. Super fun for the kids.

But of course...

2011-05-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

This being Amsterdam, I should have known that any excellent thing for pedestrians would have an equivalent for cyclists.

But the guy on the bike seems to be so much more cavalier with his button pushing than the guy on foot. Clearly a Dutch hierarchy.

Focus on crossing

2011-05-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

Crosswalks in Amsterdam are a bit chaotic, what with the extra lanes for bikes going every which way.
One thing I do appreciate is the signs that they put up to indicate that one should push a button if one wants to cross the street. I love how focussed the guy in the sign is on pushing the button just so. And he's got that classic looks that feels so 1950s Euro.

A big move / A new country

2011-05-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hello all.

It's been a long time since I posted here. Life has been crazy. It has included the end of TBWA\Vancouver, meeting with potential new employers, getting an awesome new job managing Blast Radius Amsterdam, taking a few weeks off including a trip to Nicaragua, and most recently moving to Amsterdam.

We arrived here on Saturday. The trip was relatively painless. Air Transat isn't good, but it certainly isn't bad either. We spent a couple of nights in the Hotel Vondel, which is great if you don't get their standard tiny room. (We upgraded after a night.) And then yesterday we moved into our temporary home in De Pijp. Photo of the street below.

I also started my new job in Amsterdam yesterday, after a week of training in Vancouver. All went well, but there's much to be done.

I hope to post updates here for friends, family and the curious over the coming months. Today we're off to the Hague to register with the consulate and take care of immigration issues. It's a short train ride away, but it should be interesting.

Mobile Payment

2010-11-21T17:19:00.000-08:00

I love the fact that right after my last blog posting Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, spoke about payments through mobile devices in an interview. This is how we get rid of card based payments. Check it out...

I'm kind of freaked out by the fact that Schmidt is reading my blog and ripping my comments off.

Evolving payment systems - parking meters

2010-11-13T18:53:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased the other day when I discovered that South Granville, near my home in Vancouver, had replaced its old parking meters with new ones that take credit cards. I also just got back from San Francisco, where they seem to be making the exact same switch.

This is good. I hate having to have change and, with parking prices constantly increasing, you need to be carrying at least $10 in your car, which just provides an added incentive to those who would break into my car for a few bucks. So I do approve of the transition.

But I also have to wonder whether our parking meters have only caught up with yesterday's payment system, the plastic credit card. I don't mind paying with a Visa or Mastercard account, but do I really need to keep carry the plastic card. Shouldn't we be embracing the technologies of the next decade, which will allow payments through our wireless devices. And no, calling in to a number to pay for parking is not the "mobile" solution that I'm looking for, I'm thinking more along the lines of a simple parking app.

This takes me to my current pet peeve about our regional transit system's new contest to name their new payment card. They're making a big deal about rolling out a transit pass that other places have had for over a decade. But shouldn't we be past requiring people to carry an extra piece of plastic. Shouldn't our mobile devices be able to verify our identity, what we've paid for, where we should be allowed to go.

Maybe I'm asking too much of our transit systems and municipalities. But it seems to me that they should be asking what are the systems of the future, and how do we get there, not how do we embrace the recent past.

Truly hard-core golfers

2010-11-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

A colleague of mine forwarded this list of rules from an English golf club dating back to the Battle of Britain in 1940. I've been known to play in inclement weather, watching my ball bounce off the frozen fairway and onto the ice of the solid water hazard. But compared to these guys I'm a fair weather golfer.

My favourite rule is #7. If a bomb goes off at the same time that you're swinging, you can have a do-over. But you've still got to take the one stroke penalty.

(click on the image for a closer clearer view)

How animation changes an experience

2010-08-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

It's quite amazing how a little animation can completely change an interaction. I was using my new iPhone this morning (which I'm loving) and I was thinking about the little animation that happens when I delete an e-mail. On my old Blackberry the e-mail would just go away, and the next one would appear. Whereas on my iPhone the e-mail changes shape and flies into the trash can shaped delete icon at the bottom of the page. This is the kind of thing that Apple has done on its computers for years, and they simply applied the same thinking to their handhelds. A no-brainer.

I now enjoy deleting e-mails. It's not a big thing. In fact, it's very minor. But it completely improves the experience.

This is the kind of thing that any good UX person will address. But why is it that some design really focuses on these kinds of elements, and others remains completely utilitarian? Is there a belief that adding animation makes something any less business-like? If it's fun, can it not also be functional?

And how can we apply UX thinking to a broader set of issues? Product design people think this way all the time. But what if we unleashed tech UX people on more conventional design problems. Annual reports and collateral materials could become much more interesting. How about for branding work or catalogues?

A kind-of-rambly thought for a Tuesday morning.

My issue with golf handicaps and a solution.

2010-08-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

I love golfing. It's the number one thing I like to do on my weekends. The list of reasons why I love golfing is long. It includes the fact that I love being outdoors, in a relatively natural environment, where deer walk across the fairway (see bottom) and bears are sometimes just off in the woods. I love competing against myself, constantly trying to become better. I love that it's just me and the course, and that any success or failure is totally in my hands. I love that I can constantly improve and see the changes in my game. And I love that an afternoon on the course or the range is focussed on the game, and that it can take my mind off of everything else going on in life.

I even love that there's an entire attire for golf that looks ridiculous in any other environment. Try wearing a pair of plus-fours to your neighborhood coffee shop. The course is the only place where I even try to wear my favourite plaid pants.

There's a lot of love for golf.

There are a few things I don't love about the game. I don't love how much it costs. And I don't love 5 1/2 hour rounds that consume the better part of a day. But I can live with those.

On the other hand, there's one thing I hate about golf, and that's the elitist attitude that drives the golf handicap system. For those who don't know, handicaps are a wonderful tool that allow golfers of all levels to compete with one another. With my handicap I can play with someone much better than me and someone much worse, and we can all participate in a contest to see who has the best game relative to a personal average. It's something that doesn't happen in most other sports and it makes the game more fun.

However, to ensure that people don't do anything "funky" with their handicaps the golf world has put restrictions on how you calculate your 'cap. The most significant of those rules is that you are expected to track your handicap at your personal (i.e. private) golf club. This allows your club to monitor how you are entering your scores to calculate your handicap, but it also changes the idea of the handicap from being a tool to create equality amongst golfers to one where lesser golfers are excluded from the system.

This system will have been in place for a hundred years as of next year. From my reading of the Wikipedia article on handicaps I learned that the governing bodies have reviewed this system before, to determine if there's a more equitable way of managing the tracking of handicaps. And, if their infinite conservative golf wisdom, they decided that the existing structure was the right one. I'm not surprised by this, because I expect that every member of the committee that did the review, as well as every senior person at the USGA, is a member of some golf club somewhere. (You may have guessed that I'm not a member. I've yet to figure out how to justify tens of thousands of dollars of entrance fees, plus annual dues, when I can walk on to a terrific local course for $65.)

There are workarounds to the elitist club handicap system. The USGA has set up an alternative approach whereby if you get enough people together, and those people have a public space to enter scores at a golf club where others can watch, and there's a peer review system, then they can keep handicaps. This is a bit of an improvement, but not much. It still assumes that the golfer is going to play the same club on a regular basis with the same group of people, and that they'll formally apply for handicap management approval from the USGA through a committee that they set up. The USGA seems to have tried to be reasonable, but it's really not a good solution. Particularly for someone like myself who plays about 1/3 of my rounds solo or with strangers on the Sunshine Coast coarses, and the rest with varying friends and colleagues at clubs around BC. I look for variety in my game, not to play with the same people at the same place every week.

There is a better solution. We just haven't embraced it yet. The last time the USGA did a review of this challenge was decades ago, before any of our current technology had even been considered. I write this blog post as I site in a Starbucks, where I just checked in via LinkedIn and where I'm monitoring my about to begin workday via iPhone. (I know, I'm a cliche.) When I went golfing on the weekend I used the GolfShot iPhone app, which gave me my distances from the green via GPS, kept track of my score and game data, and e-mailed me and my playing partners our scores after our round. It also tracks my play against my handicap, which I do keep in an unofficial way. (I use Yahoo!'s handicap tracker, which isn't valid in the US and is especially not valid in Canada.) There's a slew of these apps out there, all of which track scores and have the ability to send data to playing partners. It's a small step from here to having the scores validated by playing partners, automatically fed to a USGA or RCGA system, and enabling every golfer, regardless of course, playing partner or wealth to compete.

And the fix doesn't have to rely on a mobile app, even though that seems to be the easiest way to pull it off. All it requires is a bit of technology (i.e. a website) to allow players to enter scores, and for others to validate those scores. It doesn't need to be expensive, or a cash grab for a golf association. It just needs to be simple and accessible.

Back before I messed up my foot I enjoyed tracking tracking my runs with the Nike+ system. It showed me how I'd done, how I was progressing, and it let me compare myself to others. For me, it wasn't competitive. I'm slow and I always will be. But it was incentive enough to make sure I got out there and got my run in, even when I didn't want to go. Why can't a golf technology system take on the same role. Why can't it not just maintain the status quo, but actually enhance the game, make it more competitive, even allow me to play against friends that live hundreds of miles away.

Why can't technology break down the elitist barriers of the conservative golf handicap system, transform it, and turn it into a tool that makes the game more enjoyable for everyone.

Don't include everything - A word of advice.

2010-07-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not a creative director. I can't draw and, while I can write, I can't write ads. But as I've evolved in the agency business I've been asked more and more often to review portfolios and give my opinion.

I'm going to give the same advice as any good creative director will. It falls under the heading "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." That's good advice for most things in life.

Just because you came up with an ad. Just because you designed a web site. Just because you developed a company's branding. Doesn't mean you need to include it in your portfolio.

If it's not awesome. Leave it out.

I'd rather see four great examples of what you're capable of than four good pieces and ten weak ones. Everything you produce in your career won't be great. We've all got a few stinkers under our belt. But your portfolio is your most important selling tool. Use it to sell yourself, not to give a total and complete honest review of your career to date. Only include the great.

And, if you don't have any great, find a way to get it in there. And if you think it might be great, but you aren't sure, then it probably isn't.

A fabulous combo

2010-06-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

I walked past this business this afternoon and was very intrigued.

They've created a gym for swordfighting. And they're not talking fencing here, but good old fashioned sword fighting.

I can't claim to be terribly cool. Actually, I'm kind of geeky, so I know geeky when I see it, and this is crazy-geeky. I spotted a guy walking down the street the other day carrying what appeared to be a broadsword and had a bit of a chuckle.

On the other hand, I'll bet these guys are in way better shape than I am. I'm sure swinging a sword requires a lot more cardio than swinging a golf club.

And you've got to respect embracing your passion, running with it, and turning it into a business. I hope they do incredibly well and open a chain of swordplay gyms across North America. That'd be very cool.

This reminds me of Dave Eggers' very cool pirate store in San Francisco. I loved that placed and the story behind it.

Rory Sutherland

2010-06-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

Mr. Sutherland is almost always fabulous.

The world needs more brilliant solutions that are inexpensive to implement. The kind of things that make you say "But of course." These are the kinds of things that we'd like to develop in business, but they're often hard to get paid for because, as Rory points out, they're not as exciting as the big expensive shiny object.

Love it....

EMS in India

2010-06-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

I'm just getting around to dealing with some of our India photos now. I came across these two, which I liked.

This was taken just outside of Cochin. If you don't pull through on the way to the hospital in this ambulance, then they've got the next steps covered too. (Read the blue words on the side of the van.)

Unfortunately, the van isn't quite long enough to hold the crucial equipment.

Heading home

2010-05-24T20:54:00.001-07:00

The 21^st was our final day in India. We had a 7:00 flight from Cochin to Mumbai, which meant we had to leave Fort Cochin at around 4:00.

We started the day with breakfast at a cool little café that I’d found the previous day. I think it was called Art Café Cochin. Delicious French toast, fruit, and properly done coffee. A real treat.

We spent some time online, dealing with emails, then we did some more shopping in the local stores. We still hadn’t bought anything and we had limited success again. Those who we wanted to buy for would have to accept that they were in our hearts, even if we never found them good gifts. We did buy some postcard type things in one shop, but more because proceeds went to local charity than any other reason.

It seemed we’d run out of time though. Lunch was a quick bite at the Art Café, then back to our hotel to settle our bill and repack. Every item had to be shaken out properly prior to the trip home. We didn’t want any special Indian visitors joining us on the trip home. At 4:00 our cab arrived and we started the long journey home.

I had a master plan for the day. We’d leave Cochin on Go Air and get into Mumbai by 9:10. We’d then check in for the rest of our journey home, losing our big packs in the process. Then we’d go to a restaurant near the airport that I’d been looking forward to visiting for weeks.

We’d get there around 10:15, and the restaurant was open until midnight. After dinner we’d head back to the airport, go through security, and still have an hour or so to spare.

No such luck. Our flight leaving Cochin was a little late, but not overly so. Maybe 20 minutes. When we got into Mumbai we had to take a shuttle into the domestic arrivals terminal to collect our bags. When we got there I asked the guy at the info desk how to get to the International departures terminal, to check in. He asked to see my boarding pass or itinerary. I told him I didn’t have one, since we were on an e-ticket. Well, apparently there’s no such thing as an e-ticket in India, even once you’re in the terminal. You

’ve got to have a printed out itinerary, to show with your passport, to get through any security gate. The logic behind this is totally lost on me, since any idiot can print up a fake itinerary to show a security guard, since they don’t check it against anything. But there you are.

I walked away perturbed and annoyed, realizing I didn’t have many options. I did have my laptop on my, with an email with my itinerary, so I returned to the info desk to see if I could use that. The info guy said he was willing to give it a try and took me down to the army sergeant manning the door, to ask. They sergeant said no, paper was the only form of itinerary I could show.

The info guy said that if I could e-mail him my itinerary, he’d find a way to print it out. Fortunately, the Mumbai airport has WiFi. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have an SMS number to get access. But this time the info guy was willing to let me use his number. I sent my confirmation e-mail from Expedia to the guy’s Gmail account, and he went to their admin office to print it out. It was a huge pain, but I appreciated how helpful info dude was. His name was Parvez Perekar. I know this ‘cause that’s the gmail account I sent it to.

I had to wait about 20 minutes for him to come back and, while we waited, a bus came and took everyone waiting to go to International Departures away. When info guy came back with my print out we were issued two bus tickets to get to the departures terminal, but even with my itinerary there was some confusion. For some reason, when Expedia had sent me my “trip details” itinerary it said it was only for one person, not for the two of us. At the time I received that e-mail I’d checked on this and ensured that there were no problems, but now it was a problem. (I should have sent Parvez my original itinerary, but had forgotten about the issue and he was long gone now.) The folks that issued the bus ticket decided to overlook the issue, so we were off to the next terminal.

Or, eventually we’d be off. The folks that gave us the tickets told us to have a seat and they’d let us know when it was time to go. We sat down and, having WiFi access, I opened my laptop to muck around. Then we noticed that everyone else was lining up for the door to catch the shuttle between terminals. We realized that no on was going to call us, we needed to jump in line. It was about half an hour between each shuttle. By the time we got out of domestic arrivals and on our way to International departures we’d been there for over two hours. There would be no nice final dinner in India or a leisurely check-in.

The bus ride between terminals was amazing. It felt completely post-apocalyptic. There were large shanty towns built right against the security perimeter of the airport. We were going through twelve layers of security to just get into the airport, and I’m pretty sure five hundred rupees would be enough to buy your way into someone’s corrugated roof shack and over the barbed wire. This was actually a little shocking, considering India’s problems with terrorism lately. Just the day before Maoists (Maoists?) had derailed a train in the north and set fire to dozens of fuel tankers. Stupid airport security, like the printed itinerary requirement, drives me nuts. But the lack of airport security was perhaps even more amazing.

Our bus pulled over at international departures and it was proper chaos. Of course, people picking up friends and family aren’t allowed in the airport, due to their lack of itinerary, so they all congregate outside the doors. And there’s security to get inside, requiring a passport and itinerary, so there’s a line up outside. But Indian lineups are a special beast, particularly when everyone has a baggage cart with which to bash one another’s ankles. It’s like the last helicopter out of a falling city. It was an ugly sight and, I hate to say, we were part of the ugliness.

When we finally forced our way to the front door the predicable happened. The army dude took a look at our itinerary and only saw one name on it. “Where is Colleen Elizabeth” he demanded. We argued that his colleague at the departures terminal had been fine with it. (He hadn’t.) But he insisted on an itinerary with both names. (Damn you Expedia!) I thought I’d try the e-mail approach with him, letting him know I could show him the itinerary on my laptop. He nodded. So I whipped out my Macbook Air, waited for it to boot, opened my mail program and pulled up the e-mail. Now I was back in the chaos, but this time waving a laptop instead of a piece of paper. We had to run over a few ankles again to retake our place in line, but eventually he realized the stupidity of me waving a computer in his face and just waved us through. We were into the inner sanctum of Mumbai International Departures.

Our adventure had just begun, but it wouldn’t be so dramatic from here on. I just had lots of lines to stand in now. I was standing in the line to check in when I saw a guy who had just checked in walking past us. I did a double take. It was Matt Peskelewis, who I used to work with and got along with quite well. It’s a very small world when you run into people you know in the Mumbai airport. Matt was there to meet with his production people for his children’s clothing company. It was his third trip through the chaos of that airport in the past year. He stuck with us and guided us the rest of the way.

We checked in, only having minor difficulties this time due to our lack of proper printed out paperwork. Then was an endless security line. Colleen was pulled out, because the women’s security line had capacity. Not understanding, I tried to follow, but it didn’t go over so well. I got back in line.

By the time we finally made it through all the lines we had about 20 minutes to spare before boarding. We grabbed a quick bite at the international food court and I looked around the shops, hoping to find an India souvenir of some sort. Apparently Mumbai’s airport has decided to remove anything that would remind a traveler that they’re in India, only carrying generic global goods. So we were out of luck again. We went through at least two more security checks, then boarded our flight to Brussels.

We had a bit of a stopover in Brussels. Just long enough to grab a coffee and feel tired. But when it was time to go our airline, Jet Airways, announced that we’d be leaving late. Their computer system was down, so they’d have to be loading everyone manually, and they thought that that would get us out of there 45 minutes late. Except they didn’t start boarding until almost departure time, so by the time we actually got out of there we were already two hours behind schedule. Since we’d had an hour and a half layover planned for Toronto, we knew we’d now be missing our connection. (Jet Airways sucks. We’ve had four flights with them now. Two have been late by an hour or more. Boo Jet Airways.)

Brussels to Toronto was another non-event. Lots of movies and stiff legs. In Toronto Air Canada was brutally efficient at getting us on another flight. We had another meal and watched a bit of hockey in the terminal, then boarded our final leg, which is where I’m writing this final installment of our trip blog. The trek home has been a long one. From Fort Cochin to Vancouver it’ll be about a 39 hour trek. I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight and maybe making some waffles for breakfast tomorrow. It’s been a long and very interesting trip, but I’m looking forward to being home.

If you’re twisted enough to have read all of our travel blog, thanks for sticking with it. I tend to write a lot and I don’t edit as I go. I leave out a bit, including the most personal bits, and things that might be insulting to others, but I include a lot of boring stuff, like what we did for lunch and how we got from point A to point B. That’s because this is as much a record for me as it is for anyone else. So thanks for coming along for the ride. If you’ve got any comments or suggestions, I’m happy to hear them.

Where to next?

A day wandering Cochin

2010-05-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

The twentieth was our last full day in India. We had no plans, just to relax, see a bit more of Fort Cochin and enjoy a little more of India.

Our day began with breakfast at our hotel. Unfortunately, we lacked confidence in their kitchen, so it was really just toast and coffee. We then decided to do a little shopping to see if we could find anything interesting to take home with us. We trolled around the little stores in the more touristy area near our hotel, but didn’t come across much. Colleen and I had spotted what looked like some pretty cool shops down near Jew Town on our way to Alleppey two days prior, so we thought we’d walk over there.

We normally took rickshaws from place to place, but I thought that it seemed like a nice day to try to walk it, so we set out. It was a nice day, and it was interesting to walk through a more suburban part of an Indian city. Far calmer and more relaxed than other places we’d been and a good lesson on what other parts of this country might be like. Unfortunately, our map, or my navigation skills, left much to be desired, and we found ourselves fairly lost after a while. Eventually, we can across a road name we recognized and realized we’d been going south rather than east all along. I was in favour of walking out way out of it and Colleen was up for it, but our little stroll became a very long walk.

Along the walk children would often say “hi” to us and run off. Occassionally they’d be more bold. A boy on a bike would ride by Colleen and yell out “Beautiful” as he’d pass. A group of kids would surround us and ask us for a coin from whatever country we were from or a pen. In one of the last encounters with the kids of Kochin a group wanted to shake our hands, then they wanted to kiss Colleen’s hand. I’m sure it made for pretty good stories when they got back home that afternoon.

Eventually we made it to the muslim neighborhood, which neighbors Jew Town and the shops that we’d been looking for. We poked through the shops and they were rather fantastic. Loads of amazing antiques and likely things that had been made to look like antiques. My favourite items tended to be the great old doors, likely taken from local buildings, hopefully with the owner’s consent.

We didn’t find anything worth buying and it had been a long morning of walking. We caught a rickshaw back to our ‘hood, so we could lunch again at the same place we had the day before, Dal Roti. This time the proprietor was preoccupied with being a raconteur with another table, but the meal was still very good.

After lunch we headed back to our hotel for a bit, then caught another rickshaw back to the stores around Jew Town. More browsing, but no buying. While we were poking around one of the monsoon rains began to fall. It’s amazing the amount of rain that can come down in a short amount of time. It rains a lot in Vancouver, but never in this kind of volume. Within a few minutes the streets were full. I had fortunately borrowed an umbrella from our hotel, which provided a modicum of protection, and it was a bit of fun to dash from shop to shop.

We eventually ran out of shops to visit and popped into a little French café for a bit and a tea. Then we walked the route back to our hotel. It was an interesting walk along the spice road. All along the way were warehouses, big and rather smallish, full of spices and foodstuffs. Each place held its tea or potatoes or garlic or spices in great burlap sacks, and the road was a hive of activity loading and unloading shipments. It was a great walk, as long as we kept out of the way.

On the walk back we ran into English Stephen, who we’d met a week plus earlier on the train to Hampi, and who I’d spotted at a distance in Ooty. He’d subsequently teamed up with some other English folk, and they’d come to Fort Cochin. We’d run into him and one of his friends both riding their rented bikes earlier in the day, when we’d had to explain that there was no fort in Forth Cochin. This time they stopped beside us in the rain, both riding the same bike. They let us know that they’d stopped for a minute earlier, to get out of the rain, turned their backs, and when they turned back one of their bikes was gone. They were trying to figure out what to do and how much it would cost, knowing that a used bike cost about Rp500, but that they’d likely be charged many times that. When we ran into them later in the day again, this time on rickshaws, we asked them what they’d done about the bike. They said they’d dropped the one off and done a runner on the other. It seemed like poetic justice to me, since I suspect that the bike shop was probably the ones who stole their bikes in the first place.

Following our walk back from the spice shops we rested in our hotel and washed up. Dinner was in the courtyard restaurant of a nice hotel, where the atmosphere was great and the food was poor. And post dinner was another night of finding English programming on Indian TV. The TV program Castle has turned out to be a favourite of ours, even thought we’d never heard of it at home.

Comment on the train death toll

2010-05-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

We watched a documentary on the Mumbai train system the other day, which we made use of when we left the city. It’s the main transportation system through the city and some days over 6 million people ride the system, at extremely low costs.

But here’s the thing – it’s totally overwhelmed by the volume. The population has swollen and the system’s capacity can’t keep up.

One of the main problems tends to be that no one wants to follow the rules in the stations. They’re all in a hurry to get where they need to go, so they walk across the tracks and down take the elevated walkways, which are admittedly a pain when you’ve got heavy baggage.

So, every year between 3,000 and 4,000 people are hit and killed on the train tracks in Mumbai alone. That’s 10 people a day that die on their tracks.

The drivers are told to stop the train, get the body off the tracks, then move on and report the body at the next stop. You can’t stop the train for any longer than that.

Granted, Mumbai is a monster city. It’s half the size of my country. But 3,000 people a year dying on their train tracks is insane. And, while not easily preventable, preventable all the same if someone really wanted to fix the situation.

Perhaps this is just one of many examples of me applying my cultural norms to this Indian population that is so different from my own.

Morning on the boat and the Dutch Palace

2010-05-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

The morning of the 19^th we woke on our houseboat. The AC had shut off a few hours earlier, so it was already pretty warm. The monsoons had started to kick in and we’d had a big rain during the night, so everything was pretty damp too, but it was a pleasant morning.

Our cook served up a big breakfast but, like most Indian breakfasts, we ate selectively. Toast, fruit and a pancake or two is as adventurous as I get in the morning.

Our boat got going and before we knew it we were back in the harbour where we’d started. We hadn’t actually slept that far away, which we’d been suspicious about since we could see the occasional headlight through the trees at night. We disembarked, caught a cab, and got a ride back into town.

We only had a couple more nights in India, so we thought we’d try another hotel in Fort Cochin that sounded very nice – the Ballard Bungalows. We called ahead and booked a room. When we arrived Colleen stayed in the car while I ran up to check the space. It was in an old converted heritage building and was very interesting, with huge high ceilings, nice patios, and crazy ornate beds. We took it and, since we’d only slept moderately well on the hot boat the night before, immediately took a nap.

When we got up we went for a late lunch at a highly recommended local place called Dal Roti. The proprietor was a very kind gentleman who was happy to help us through the menu. We had one of our best meals in India in a very relaxed atmosphere.

Fort Cochin has been a major southern port for centuries. Massive cantilevered Chinese fishing nets line the waterfront, each of which is manned by about 8 guys to raise and lower the net. The Portuguese at one time had control of the area and were subsequently booted out by the Dutch. Later the English had their turn. And, like any great port town, it had a major Jewish population. All of these influences came together to create a fabulously interesting environment, definitely worthy of a day’s walking around.

On the other hand, the monsoons had come to town and you didn’t want to get caught in them. They seemed to kick in in the late afternoon and last for a couple of hours. On the positive side, they certainly cooled the place down, making it much more pleasant to go for a walk around town.

When we finished our lunch at Dal Roti the rain had somewhat subsided. I had read about an interesting place called Mattancherry Palace, that the Portuguese had given (bribed) to the local Raja in the 16^th century. The Dutch had fixed the place up later, so it was also called the Dutch Palace. I had expected something fairly palatial, and we were disappointed. It was a pretty beat up building, and all of the out buildings seemed to be falling down. A lot of the Hindu paintings on the interior of the building had been preserved, but many were only half finished and they weren’t terribly interesting. There was a smattering of museum-type pieces (e.g. clothes and weapons), which were of greater interest, but not much greater.

To be honest, the most interesting stuff in the Dutch Palace were the murals in the ladies bedchamber. These depicted Krishna, with all six hands and two feet, “taking care” of a group of milkmaids. Krishna was a stud, and this appealed to the immature twelve year old boy in me. It’s pretty shocking what they’d paint on someone’s walls a few centuries ago.

A rickshaw took us back to our hotel, where we cleaned up and went for dinner. We had a few places that we were eager to check out, but it turned out that most of them were closed. It was really the low season here. (I’m like that guy in the Capital One ads, who seems to only go to places during the offseason.) Colleen picked a place on the corner that she thought looked decent, largely because it had the most diners, which is usually a good strategy. This time, not so much. Dinner was terrible, and there wasn’t much else to do in town after. Back to our hotel, for an evening of reading and searching for watchable English TV.

A side note – It seems like there’s only 10 ads that run on English TV, almost all of which are awful. It’s just painful to see the same ad in every commercial break, sometimes multiple times in one break.

Boating the Keralan backwaters

2010-05-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

The 18^th was the day of our house boating trip in Kerala. I’d read about them in Lonely Planet and, when we’d been in Goa, our travel agent had been promoting them. We’d booked one through her and were optimistic that it’d be good.

Our taxi picked us up at 8:30. We tried to grab a cup of coffee at the Indian Starbucks knock-off, Café Coffee Day, but we were the first ones there in the morning and they couldn’t figure out how to run their espresso machine. Jumping back in the car we asked our driver if he knew another good coffee shop nearby. He stopped at the first restaurant up the street, where they served watered down coffee with loads of sugar in a plastic cup. I dumped it at the first light.

The drive was from Fort Cochin to Alleppey. One thing that gets confusing around here is that all of the cities seem to have two names – the first is often perhaps an English name (e.g. Bombay) and the second is often the renamed / original name (e.g. Mumbai). We were driving for quite some time before I figured out that Allapuzha was Alleppey, and that that was our destination. The drive was about an hour and a half, and when we arrived our driver seemed to have no idea where he was going. We were supposed to have connected with the boat operator Faisel, but every time I had tried to reach him I had only ended up with people who said they were “friends of Faisel”. It was all quite confusing, but I decided to just go with it and hope for the best. Eventually, our driver connected with a FoF, who met us with a rickshaw, and we found our way down to the boats.

We were pretty nervous driving through Alleppey. All along the waterways were loads of boats, in various states of disrepair. They ranged from large canoes with roofs, to tourist barges, to pretty exotic converted barges. One thing that LP said to do when booking a houseboat was to get down to the water and see what you were booking. We’d booked in Goa, so we hadn’t done that. We’d have to hope for the best.

Our rickshaw driver dropped us off at the waterfront that was covered in houseboats. They all seemed pretty nice, but huge. The guys told us to board the first boat and just have a seat and wait. Colleen and I weren’t even sure if we’d be sharing a boat with others or if we’d have it to ourselves. I thought I’d booked the latter, but the more I saw the more uncertain I became.

After a bit of a wait, we were told our boat had arrived. It was at the end of five boats that had been tied up to one another. (It was a very busy docking area.) We crossed the four and found our boat. It was terrific. It had an open bow, where our skipper would drive from, a large room with a bathroom for Colleen and I, a kitchen in the stern, and an upper deck for sitting and watching the world go by. It was just Colleen, me and our two crew, the captain and a cook. It was a great size for a day’s adventure.

We got going immediately, puttering along the waterways outside of Alleppey. They call this area the Kerala backwaters, and it’s an amazing maze of canals and waterways that seem to go on forever. If you didn’t have an experienced captain you’d certainly get lost. However, if you did get lost, there was never a shortage of other boats to ask. This house boating seemed to be a very popular activity, even in the so-called offseason, and on our way out we followed dozens of other vessels doing the same thing.

The boats were amazing. They’re designed like rice barges, and many of them may be converted commercial boats. They seemed to range from 40 ft to 80 or more. They range in design, with most having a main central sleeping/eating area, and an open bow. Many have top decks fitted with chairs and chaises. Some, like ours, have AC in the bedrooms to keep things manageable when the days get too hot, but the AC only goes on at night. And they’re all covered with woven palm roofs in various shapes. They’re quite lovely.

We spent the afternoon just heading up and down the many channels. It was a lovely day, overcast to keep the extreme heat down just a bit. Our cook put together a nice lunch of fish and various curries and local Keralan dishes. Afterwards it was impossible not to nap on deck as the world floated past. All along the shore were houses of the families that made their living fishing and farming in these waters, carrying on their daily tasks. It was a surreal experience to relax on our boat and take it all in.

Late in the afternoon our captain, who, like the cook, didn’t speak English, pointed to the shore and said “Fish market” and “prawns”. He seemed to want to know if I was interested and, knowing how much Colleen loves a good prawn dish, I agreed. We pulled over and bought 5 massive prawn beasts. I got robbed on the deal, and I’m sure the captain got a good cut, but it seemed worth it for a locally caught prawn dinner.

That evening we moored against one of the waterway’s banks. It was such a busy area that we were right behind another houseboat, which wasn’t really a bother except they seemed to want to watch loud Bollywood films late at night. Our cook served up a very good dinner of prawns, chicken curry and a variety of Keralan veggie dishes.

After dinner we retired upstairs, where we could watch the sun set and talk as it got dark around us. It was pleasant, although not perfect due to our neighbours. Eventually the lack of light and the abundance of mosquitoes got to us, and we retired to our cabin for the night.

A Keralan backwater cruise had been highly recommended by all the Indian guidebooks and they hadn’t steered us wrong. It was a lovely way to spend the day.

To Fort Cochin

2010-05-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

The next day, the 17^th, was a travel day. A bus from Ooty to Bangalore and then a flight from Bangalore to Cochin.

The local western coffee shop was closed when we had to head into town to catch the bus, so we went off with no breakfast. That was probably a good thing, because the ride down from Ooty was actually worse than the ride up. Plastic barf bags were handed out at the start of the journey and the first was in use by the family behind us within five minutes. The rest of the three hour drive down the hill was a constant chorus of vomiting from all around the bus. The driver pulled over at one time so that bags could be disposed of and people could get their acts together, and I’d say 40% of the bus filed out. I was feeling better by this time, but for Colleen who gets car sick at home, riding a swaying bus with the sound of sick all around was a nasty experience. Power to her though, she made it without joining the choir.

The rest of the ride to Bangalore was uneventful. A movie called My Name is Khan played, about an autistic Indian guy who goes to America. It seemed pretty bad to me, and we could only understand the American portion, but Colleen thought it was decent. Then a shocking Bollywood movie came on. I just don’t get that stuff.

We caught a cab from the bus depot to the airport, almost an hour away. We were pretty excited about the airport though, ‘cause we’d been told it had good restaurants and WiFi access and we had a few hours to burn. We checked in but couldn’t find any signs saying which restaurants were where. We took a look at our gate area and it looked promising, so we went through security to see what was there. It turned out to be a bad Indian restaurant and a bad coffee shop. We went to leave that area, at which point we were informed that once we’d gone through security we couldn’t leave. Now, I’ve done some decent travelling and this was the first time I’ve encountered this problem. I’m happy lining up and going through screening a few times, but here I was trapped in my one little gate slot. We hadn’t eaten all day and we were stuck with little option.

We did the best we could to get some pre-packaged sandwiches down and tried to make the best of it. Next, I wanted to get online. I pulled out my laptop and tried to access the available WiFi. I was happy to pay for it, but it appeared to be free, I just had to give some info. Unfortunately, the info they required was my SMS number, in order to text me the password to get WiFi. I intentionally didn’t bring my phone on this trip, which meant there was no way of getting access, free or paid. Aaargh. Bangalore Airport I hate you.

Some poor airport employee had the misfortune of approaching me to do a customer satisfaction survey. I don’t think he really understood what happened.

We caught a Kingfisher flight down to Cochin and got in around 8:00 PM. From there we got a cab to Fort Cochin, to the little hotel we’d booked, the Raintree Lodge. When we pulled up we were met by Victor, the incredibly friendly manager. The room was decent and the AC worked – we were happy. We went down the street to get some dinner, but most places had closed at 9:00 or so, and it was now getting close to 10. But we found an Italian restaurant called the Four Seasons, which served some good pizza and pasta, and stuffed ourselves.

Not much happens on travel days on a trip like this, but they’re hard work. We went back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep before the next day’s adventure in Kerala.

Flower shows and tea museums in Ooty

2010-05-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

The 16^th was a wonderful morning, since it was the first day in several where we weren’t ill and didn’t have to move. We ate breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, which was tough because the only fresh items tended to be Indian and, while I love Indian food, I can’t deal with it for breakfast.

We spent some time in the morning online, then we decided to visit the Ooty flower show. I had read that it was the highlight of the year in Ooty and the hotel’s city guide said that it was one of the best flower shows in the world. While I really don’t care that much about gardening, visiting one of the world’s best flower shows seemed like an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

We caught a cab to the botanical centre and we could already see that it was going to be chaos. We bought our tickets and headed in. It was a mess. There was a solid line of people moving very slowly past about 100 meters of stalls of some of the saddest flowers you've ever seen. Everyone was jammed in, pushing past one another, to see flowers that looked like they were grabbed from the bin behind the local florists. We had to wait 15 minutes to just get past the first line and then we were into open space, but there wasn’t much to see. More stalls of sad wilted flowers, a few installations of flowers stuck onto statues and buildings, and a map of India made of flowers.

Colleen was not amused. She was tired of being shoved and pushed around at a really rather awful flower show, with nothing to see beyond flowers that we get at our local florists at home. On the other hand, I was enjoying the irony of the whole thing and was rather amused by the badness of it all. To be honest, this was probably not the best mix of perspectives, and we decided to get out of there.

Colleen, not feeling well, headed back to the hotel. I wanted to see a bit more of touristy Ooty, so I negotiated with a rickshaw driver to take me to the tea museum. A point to note – I’ve discovered that in India, any time I think I’ve won a negotiation, I’ve actually lost.

I went to the tea museum with low expectations, and they were exceeded. The big sign on the building said Tea Museum and Tea Factory. The reality was that it was much more the latter, but that was OK. I got to walk through the process that tea goes through, getting from foliage to packaged product. It was a good demonstration, as the machines that were there were in action and tea was being bagged. And the place smelled great. I had gone all the way through the factory demonstration, had fought my way through the gift area that seemed to focus on products having nothing to do with tea, and found myself in the parking area again having completely missed the so-called “museum” part. I went back in the main entrance and found the museum hidden off to one side. It wasn't a museum but rather a series of posters explaining the history of tea. I realized that I could probably get a better history of tea just by looking it up on Wikipedia, but it was interesting to read the posters and see the history of the main industry of the region written from a local perspective. I was amused when I got to the section on the life of the plantation manager, where it mentioned him golfing at the Ooty Golf Club in his spare time.

My rickshaw driver had waited for me while I was in the museum. I jumped in and he took me back into town, to the Kebab Corner. I grabbed a late lunch / early supper and went for a wander around town. Being the off season for foreigners but the high season for Indian tourism I found it interesting being the only non-Indian person in a sea of people. I’m sure there was another white tourist somewhere in town, but I didn’t see anyone not Indian through thousands of people. It’s a strange feeling, coming from a place like Vancouver where even at the ethnic-specific festivals there’s a huge mix of cultures, to be here where there doesn’t seem to be a visible minority population. (Colleen pointed out that there’s probably a visible minority population within the Indian population that we just can’t see, which is probably a good point.)

I wandered through town, up to St. Stephen’s church, which dates back to the 1820s but was closed that afternoon (Sunday?), and made my way up to our hotel. Our bus out of town the next morning was an early one, so we were going to make it a fairly early night. I dealt with some blogging and e-mails and headed up to our room. I flicked on the TV and caught the finals of the world cricket championship – the World 20 Twenty – England vs. Australia. I watched about 60% of it, then decided to go to sleep. But I couldn’t get to sleep not knowing the final result, so I got up and watched with the volume off until the wee hours of the morning. Who knew cricket could be so engaging. England beat the Aussies easily, after some rather poor Aussie batting and an amazing performance by England's Pietersen and his partner, whose name escapes me.

Whacking balls in Ooty.

2010-05-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

The 15^th got underway in much the same way the prior day had – we had to find a hotel room. We had breakfast at Lymond House, packed up our stuff, and sorted out what to do. Money wasn’t an issue, the problem was that this was peak season for Ooty and this particular weekend was the Ooty flower festival, the highlight of the season. All of southern India had descended upon our little hill town.

The owner of Lymond House told us that she had a recommendation for us. It was called the Flower Cottage and, while she hadn’t been there herself, she thought it might do. (Not much of a recommendation when she’d never been there, but we were already pretty fed up with her by this time.) It was walking distance so we decided that we’d go over there and check it out, and if it wasn’t wonderful we’d simply go to the very pricey Savoy, just down the street, which I was certain had to be nice.

We walked over to Flower Cottage, where the owner met us. It was pleasant enough, in a tiny long-term home stay kind of sense, but not a good spot for us to continue our recuperation. So we walked back to the Savoy, which had to be nice. Right? Immediately after going through the gate I knew we were in trouble from the tacky children’s toys strewn across the lawn. They showed us a room, which was dark and musty and miserable and not somewhere that you wanted to be spending a day. We couldn’t stay there either. So money wouldn’t solve our problem.

We went back to Lymond House to figure it out and Colleen remembered the Holiday Inn that we had pooh-poohed before. I called and they had a room. We’d take it. We didn’t need to see it. We had faith that there would be a minimum standard to an international hotel chain. We packed up and headed over. When we got to the Holiday Inn we were incredibly pleased. The room was great.

I was pretty amused to look around the room 20 minutes later and realized that I’d be horrified to have a room like this in North America. Nothing was quite right and all was a little old and sad. But my standards are flexible, and I was very happy to have a guaranteed room for more than a single night that didn't smell and was mostly clean.

We went down to their buffet lunch for a couple of bowls of chicken noodle soup. Soup is good food when you’re not feeling so hot.

Then we got properly dressed and caught a taxi over to the OGC. Yep, we went to the Ooty Golf Club. I’d discovered it online a few days earlier and it sounded perfect. 18 holes with pretty good yardage. When we checked in they let me know that they couldn’t let Colleen play, since all she had for footwear was sandals. I wasn’t necessarily surprised, since it seemed to be the kind of place that would consider itself the last bastion of civilization in the region. But they were OK with Colleen walking the course, and she was happy with that.

I got a set of old rental clubs. They included woods that were about 20 years old and had tiny little club heads plus some old Ping Eye irons that, while aging, were still up for the job.

The next question was how many balls did I want to buy. They were going for 50Rp each, which is a pretty good deal. But I didn’t want to buy too many and have them left over afterwards. They asked me what my handicap was and, when I told them, they suggested 10 balls. I thought that was outrageous and went for five. Those who golf with me know that 10 isn’t out of the question, but I simply couldn’t buy that many prior to a round. It seemed like bad karma.

And we were paired with a caddy. Actually, we were paired with two. We started with one, but the first caddy convinced me that, since you couldn’t see much over the various hills on the course a second caddy that would go ahead and show me the line and spot the ball was a good thing. Since caddies were going for under $5 for the round, I agreed. It wasn’t the first time my caddy would try to scheme me and get away with it.

So we headed off to the first tee. I was hoping the five balls would do OK. We hoofed it up a small hill and got to a point before some trees and my caddy said “you hit from here”, then he teed up a ball. It was a 560 yard par five playing down hill, then over a hill, then off somewhere I had no idea. My second caddy was standing about 300 yards away, acting as an aiming point. The clubhouse was on the right and a stand of trees was on the left, with nasty scrub all along the ground amongst them. It was a nice wide open fairway.

I stepped up with my little driver. Took a practice swing or two. And tried to carefully drive it down the middle. Nothing doing. Pulled to the left, into the trees, and long gone. I tried to laugh it off, teed up another ball, and yanked it left, into the trees. I was now hitting five from the first tee. I tried to be casual, tried to be amused, and lined up a third tee shot, which I then pulled left again, into the trees and unfindable. This was not cool. 60% of my balls were gone, and all my manliness. I smiled and said “Let’s go” to my caddy. We walked forward about a hundred yards and he teed it up for me again – from the women’s tee. I hit a decent drive from there, but the damage was done. I’d lost all credibility.

Now I knew I had to buy some more balls. I hoped that what had just happened on the first tee wouldn’t happen again, but I also didn’t want to be half way through my round and run out of balls. So I said to my caddy – “I think we might need another five.” He popped into the club while I went ahead to continue the hole. My second (or eighth, if you're keeping score) shot was fine and the third/ninth found the green. When my caddy came back from getting some more balls he had a great big bag of fifteen balls. He said I should buy all of them. Now, I know I was bad off the first tee, but I didn’t need a total of 20 balls to play a round. (I hoped.) I told the guy I only wanted five, but he insisted I needed all of them. I said no and we left it at that, with him stuffing all the balls in the golf bag.

The Ooty Golf Club was very interesting. It seemed to have originally been built for the tea plantation managers and the subsequent English governors of the regions. Our caddies described it as one of two “natural” golf courses in the world, with the other being in Scotland. (Not true, but a good tale to tell.) By natural they meant that it wasn’t mowed, but was kept in shape by flocks of sheep roaming the course. The flock came into play on a few holes and I prayed I wouldn’t kill one of them with a shanked iron. As nice as it sounds, this means that the course was pretty rough, with big bare patches in some places and extra “fertilizer” laying about in others. Also, apparently the South India Amateur Championship was being played at the course over the next couple of days, so the greens had been taken care of. They were playing rather quickly, unless you were putting uphill, in which case the ball would stop dead immediately. And other greens were soaked with water, making them almost unplayable.

I played much better after getting off the first tee. I was never able to figure out the tiny driver, but all my other clubs came together. It was amazing playing at such a high altitude. The ball would go farther than it ever has before. I was reaching 210 yard par 3s with a 3 iron with no difficulty. For a golf fan like me, it was a great experience to play at such a high altitude.

One further note about our caddy. He didn’t seem to be terribly happy with us. After a couple of holes he got a call on his mobile (which went off in my backswing!!!) and seemed to have other thoughts. On the next hole he suggested that we didn’t have time to complete our round, and that we should move over to the back nine now. Knowing he was screwing with me, I declined, saying I wanted to play the holes in their natural order. He then said he needed to see someone in the clubhouse but would be back in five minutes. He asked if he could be paid for the balls now. I told him I didn’t want to 15, but that I’d pay for 10, just to be on the safe side. I knew I was being scammed, but I also knew I’d feel like an idiot if I lost a bunch of balls again like I did on the first tee and couldn’t continue. He took the cash and disappeared. I didn’t think I’d be seeing him again, and was pretty happy about it. The other caddy seemed much nicer, and happy to be out with us.

The round was a lot of fun. Crazy holes that went up and down hills, over gullies, and across one another. I got my act together and didn’t need half of the balls I’d bought. And, while I’m sure my score was crazy high, I had a good time. By the 15^th hole though I was dying. We hadn’t eaten a proper meal other than soup in several days, the temperature was in the mid-30s with high humidity, and we were playing at 7,000 ft. I could barely drag myself through the final few holes and was very happy when 18 was finished. This was the first time in my life I’d golfed with a caddy, and I was so glad to have someone to carry my bag.

One final note – we did meet our scammer caddy again at the 9^th hole, where he was waiting to rejoin us and get paid his fee. I let him know that we wouldn’t be needing his services anymore. He acted shocked, but I’m certain he wasn’t. I expect he pulls his tricks any time a tourist shows up.

I don’t think the Ooty Golf Club gets many western tourists coming by to play. But, if you’re in town, look it up. It’s definitely worth the trip, and it’s a totally unique golf experience.

After the round we caught a rickshaw back to the hotel. We were exhausted from being in the sun all afternoon. We cleaned up and ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. It was a weird place. We were the only ones there. Apparently all the Indian guests eat in the other restaurant, where they have vouchers as part of a package. And we were most definitely the only non-Indian guests in the hotel.

After dinner, we retired to our room where we watched the awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I wonder about Sean Connery’s selection of role’s sometimes.

Better times in Ooty

2010-05-19T01:28:00.000-07:00

It seems that everywhere we went we had to move hotels. The first morning in Ooty was no different, but this time it was our decision. The challenge wasn’t deciding to move hotels, it was finding one with room. Ooty was crazy busy.

We started the day trying to find some food we could eat safely. Lonely Planet recommended a couple of bakeries that were unknown to our taxi driver. We ended up wandering around until we stumbled upon one of them. Again, LP misled us, this place was not the hub of activity they had mentioned, but we ate what they had – egg buns and veggie puffs, to try to get some energy.

We next went to a local web café (but without the café bit) to try to find a place to stay. We called several hotels, but almost none had any room, other than the Holiday Inn, which wasn’t inspiring to us, or the very high end Savoy, which sounded OK. Eventually we reached a place mentioned in LP that we hadn’t been too excited by the description of, called Lymond House. We asked if they had a room for a couple of nights and they said yes! Victory!

When we arrived to check out the room it was perfectly lovely. It was an old converted home with several suites with great big, very clean, modern bathrooms. It had fireplaces, comfortable beds and a restaurant opening onto pleasant gardens and serving stomach friendly foods like potato leak soup. We were thrilled.

We checked out of our original hotel and moved over to Lymond House. We had a nice lunch of pumpkin ginger soup and cleaned ourselves up. We started to feel human for the first time in days. We had considered taking the mini-train down the hill from Ooty on our departure and mentioned this to the house manager. He let us know that it was closed, and that we should book our bus out of town as soon as possible, as things were filling up fast, so we headed down to the bus depot.

The bus station is pretty nasty. And buying a ticket is a matter of figuring out which stall does what. And it’s a competitive process. But we made it through and had a ticket out of town for 6:45 AM on Monday morning, in time to get us to Bangalore for our flight to Cochin.

After that we returned to Lymond and relaxed. We asked them if we could stay an extra night, since we’d only booked the two nights when we first arrived, and the booking person let us know that he’d find out and get back to us.

We had dinner at Lymond House that evening. Lamb chops for me and quiche for Colleen. They put on some music for dinner atmosphere – Leonard Cohen. It was all a little surreal and very nice. (I asked the manager why Cohen. She responded that he was very popular “amongst a certain type of person”. This woman put the snooty back into Ooty. Charming at first, a little later it was painfully arrogant.)

After dinner, not having heard back from the booking person as to the extra night, I found the manager. She looked very awkward when she let us know that they had screwed up on the bookings and that not only could we not stay the third night, we couldn’t stay the next night either. I couldn’t believe it - someone wanted us to move again.

Now, if something like this happened in North America I’d probably tell the hotel to go to hell. I was already in the room and wasn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel up for the fight, nor did I feel good about the security of our stuff if we stayed and then went out to explore Ooty. So, we were screwed, we’d have to find another place. We’d take care of that in the morning, we still had one night in the no-longer-quite-so-lovely Lymond House.

The Road to Ooty

2010-05-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

The next day began with our bus pulling into the station in Bangalore. Not surprisingly, we both still felt miserable. We hadn’t had any food stay in our bodies, apart from 7-Up and Fanta, for over two days and we hadn’t slept properly for two nights. I pulled out my handy Lonely Planet and found the best hotel within a very short distance of the station. Frankly, it wasn’t a very good hotel, but it was close and it was clean and we were only going to be there for a few hours before the next leg of our trip.

We checked in and crashed right back to bed. A few hours later, around noon, we woke. We were famished but not sure if we could keep anything down. And the idea of Indian food was somewhat horrifying. Thankfully we were in a global tech hub, so global companies had opened up there. We found a cab and caught a ride to one of four Bangalore McDonald’s.

Of course, McDonald’s in India is a little different. First, there’s no beef. So we ordered a couple of McChicken’s. And they have to cook the fries a little differently, since I think that beef tallow (what the hell is tallow?) is still used in McD’s’ oil around the world. But it was relatively edible food. Of course, we couldn’t eat our entire meal. Just a few bites here and there. But it was a step.

Or not. As soon as we got back to our room Colleen had to forfeit her lunch. Back to square one. But I got to keep mine.

We had to keep slogging on. We caught a rickshaw to the bus station, which was right across the street from our hotel, ‘cause we were feeling that weak. We found platform seven and waited for our nice AC Volvo bus to Ooty to arrive. I had specially booked seats 1 and 2 right behind the driver so that we could have a great view through the trip up into the Nilgiri Hills and enjoy the sights. Unfortunately, when our bus arrived it turned out that those were the two spots that had absolutely no leg room. We’d be cramped in on this 11 hour drive.

(By the way – in case you’re wondering – buses in India, and in all other non-western countries to which we’ve travelled, don’t have bathrooms. You get sick, it’s a problem. You have other issues, which I had but haven’t documented in this travelogue, it’s a problem.)

It was a long drive. I can usually read while on a trip, but not in my condition. The seats were cramped, but it had been a good call to book the front, where we could enjoy the view and where we weren’t as likely to get ill from the motion. We went through Mysore and then on to Ooty. We made a final stop at a small diner beside the road about 5 or 6 hours into the ride. I had told the gentlemen who ran the hotel we’d be staying at in Ooty that I’d call before we left Bangalore telling him when we’d be getting in. Unfortunately, the phone lines were never working. (A surprisingly common problem in a country that is supposed to be a tech hub.) At the rest stop I was able to get four older gentlemen to pull out their mobile phones and see if they could figure out how to call my hotel's number. It seems overly complex for even Indians to figure out which prefixes need to be used and how many digits. But eventually, thanks to the old dudes in their lawn chairs at the rest stop, I got through and let the hotel know that we’d be arriving very late.

(An aside – Everyone in India has a mobile phone. This, in itself, isn’t surprising. But it seems to cause challenges for those of us who don’t have a phone on them and, as a result, don’t have an SMS number. One gentleman couldn’t seem to figure out how to book me a bus ticket without an SMS number until I showed him how to uncheck the box on his computer. And in one of our hotels it wouldn’t let me sign up for WiFi access unless I gave them my SMS number. It has become an automatic assumption, like having a home address.)

It turned out that the rest area was the last stop before the great push to Ooty. After that point the road became ridiculous. We were on a giant Volvo bus going around hairpin turns, one after another, for hours. At one point we hit a stretch that was down to a single land of incredibly uneven pavement. I said to Colleen “At least we don’t have to deal with oncoming traffic anymore.” I’m such an ignorant foreigner. It was still two lanes, and there were large vehicles coming the other way that had to negotiate with our bus.

We only had to stop a few times to back up to let other vehicles by. Our bus driver believed that might made right, and that he should be blowing past everyone. It was actually a pretty amazing driving feat. Of course, we had just spent the past two days being ill, so a drive like this wasn’t the best thing for us. Fortunately for us, we had no food in our stomachs to lose. (We hadn’t even thought about chancing the road side restaurant.) But the others on the bus started getting ill, including the guy sitting right behind us. So we had to sit on this lurching vehicle with the sound of yakking in our ear as we fought to control our “issues”. The lovely part is that when someone’s sick bag became full they would go to the front of the bus and chuck the clear bag out the driver’s window. Nasty!

Speaking of littering, my favourite surreal part of the trip came when we went through the checkpoint that led our bus into a national park. There are signs all over the place that plastic is banned in the parks. (Plastic is banned. Littering doesn’t seem to be. Bizarre.) When we first got on the bus they had given everyone a plastic water bottle, so everyone on the bus had at least one plastic bottle. Colleen and I probably had six between us. So when we got to the checkpoint the park plastic police had a few words with our driver, who then passed them a solitary water bottle that he’d had at hand for just that purpose, then we drove on. I said out loud “You’ve got to be kidding me!” and Colleen gave me a big Sshhhhh. (It’s sad. I believe that India is likely the most litter filled country I’ve been to. But they seem to want to make plastic the evil in a few parks that they want to keep clean. There’s no focus on behaviour, just plastic. It's like making guns illegal but still letting people kill one another. I must be missing a cultural thing here somewhere.)

Apart from the crazy curves and death defying passing the drive through the park area was pretty cool. We passed three or four elephants just hanging out by the side of the road. It’s also tiger territory, but we didn’t see any of them.

So we finally pull into Ooty on our now very gross bus and are so happy to be done. We’ve survived the ordeal and made it to what is reported to be a very peaceful “hill station”. It’s late, but we got in a lot earlier than first planned due to our driver's technique. We get a rickshaw to the hotel we’d booked. It’s down a lavender lined lane and I have high hopes. We get there and meet the proprietor, who is a lovely older man whose kids live in Seattle. He’s been to Vancouver and we have a nice chat. Then we go to our room. Disaster. Lonely Planet had said that the rooms “carry a whiff of age and colonial class”. The only whiff these rooms carried was the whiff of their bathrooms. They may have been clean, but they certainly weren’t sanitary. And the colonial class was completely missing, unless you find rock hard beds classy and colonial.

I was crushed. It was the end of another long day. It was too late and we were too exhausted to find an alternative. Colleen was an amazing trooper. She kept an upbeat attitude, fixing up the bed with the blankets that appeared OK and just staying positive, even when I knew she felt like death. I couldn’t have appreciated her attitude more since I was pretty much finished with travelling at that point. I was thinking that maybe I’m just too old to deal with this stuff anymore. It was perhaps the first time in any of my trips when I’ve been ready to pack it in and just head home.

We slept poorly and fully clothed to try to minimize contact with the bed. I woke up around 5:00 determined that the first thing we’d do the next morning was find a great place to stay, whatever it took.

Gettin' the hell out of Hampi

2010-05-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

Morning came to Hampi and the prayers to the porcelain gods had started to subside. Colleen and I were both completely exhausted. I felt like I’d lost a fight with my intestines.

I stumbled down to the reception area, where they looked at me in terror. The first thing the manager said to me was “You need to go to the hospital.” I tried to laugh it off, unconvincingly. The last thing I wanted was a hospital in this kind of scary, pretty grubby town. Interestingly, I’d had a very good chat with an young Englishman on the train to Hampi who had told me of his group's medical problems in Northern India. One of them had had to go on a drip to get liquids into her, and he’d had to go on all sorts of meds. But I was pretty sure we had just had bad food poisoning, not something long term.

I asked them to send us up some breakfast, knowing that we couldn’t eat it but that we should try. It never got touched, except for some toast that we made an effort with later on in the day and which made an instant u-turn with me. We also asked them to send up a selection of 7-Up, Fanta and water, knowing that we needed some sugar and liquid. And then I went back to bed to try to pass out.

There’s not much else to tell about the rest of that miserable day. It was spent in bed, moaning, with periodic rushes to the washroom. Showers were frequent, to try to cool down, then the uncontrollable shivering had to be dealt with. The room heated up to the point where, even if we'd been healthy, it was ridiculously hot. The AC was ineffective. Oh, and the power would go out periodically, taking down the AC and the TV for half an hour at a time.

I am deeply grateful for the fact that we had a TV in our room. It kept me sane. This is probably politically incorrect for me to say, but I really can’t stand Indian TV or movies, which comprised 90% of what was on. But it’s a distraction. And the cricket chamionships were on at the same time, so I had several hours to try to figure out this game that I’ve always found terribly confusing. (The rules are simple. It’s the scoring that kills me.) I think I’ve got the one day test-match basics nailed, which is a major accomplishment.

The big dilemma for Colleen and I that day was that we had a 10:30 PM bus ticket that we needed to use to get to Bangalore to catch a connecting bus to Ooty the next day. We had also bought a bus ticket that left the next day that we could use instead (yes, we were double booking), but that would result in us catching the night bus to Ooty from Bangalore, which sounded pretty unpleasant. We rolled this one around all afternoon and decided we’d make the call as to whether we’d catch the bus at 8:30. When the time came, we’d been yak free for 3 hours. We felt like hell. We weren’t sure if we’d survive the rickshaw ride to Hospet to catch the bus, let alone the bus ride itself. But we decided to make a run for it. Another night spent in Hampi just sounded too terrible to us.

We’d asked the hotel to book us a taxi, but they said there were none to be had. Rickshaw it was. We packed up, asked the hotel to not give away our room in case we were back in half an hour, and climbed in.

I didn’t think I was going to make it after five minutes of bouncy exhausty rickshaw, but after ten minutes more I felt better. I’d make it to the bus stop anyway. Colleen forged on too. We didn’t talk, both of us just staring blankly ahead, trying to keep it together.

The bus stop was a dodgy looking stoop in front of a bank with the power out. Nothing around to indicate that buses actually stopped here. But we sat and waited and sweated and were quiet. People eventually joined us. Cows and pigs wandered the streets. And we felt miserable.

The bus eventually came – late of course – but we were good to go. It was a sleeper bus, which I’d never been on before. That meant that there was a row of two seats below, then a row of single bunks. And above there was another row of single bunks and a row of double bunks. When we’d bought the tickets we’d picked up a double and a single, beside each other. The idea that we’d bought three seats seemed to blow the ticket taker away, but it turned out to be a blessing. We climbed into our bunks, stowed our bags in the third bunk that was separated from the aisle by my body for security reasons, and we were able to lie down in relative peace. We had windows that opened and, apart from the very poor roads and the constant honking, it was a pretty good spot to feel like hell in. I won’t say that we slept well, but we wouldn’t have in a real bed either, and we certainly wouldn't have in our hard beds and in the hot room in Hampi. It was as good as it was going to get.

It had been a very long and unpleasant day. It was looking better now that we were on the bus, but we both felt drained and miserable. This wasn’t going to be over in a single day.

Riding to Hampi and one bad lassi

2010-05-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

The morning of the 11^th was an early one. Our driver, Franko, showed up at 6:30 and we were off for a day’s journey – destination Hampi. He got us to the Margao train station by 7:30, where we desperately tried to figure out which platform and which train we should be getting on. India’s rail system is the worlds largest public utility employer, with over 1,500,000 staff. Unfortunately, they are terribly elusive when you need them. We eventually figured it out with the help of other equally lost looking travelers. I had a good chat with the golf pro from the nearby Intercontinental, who stood out due to his very unique luggage, and gave him my recently finished Good Walk Spoiled.

Booking train tickets had been challenging. The only ones available had been sleeper seats in a non-AC car. Fortunately, booking sleeper seats gave us more room than the average Indian, who all seemed to have to battle for space and were well accustomed to fitting 5 people in 3 seats, but it was still pretty jammed for all on board. It was about a 6 hour trip that I made pass by reading Cormack McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a terrific book and, if you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I love McCarthy’s style, but it’s not a terribly uplifting read. Regardless, it was a wonderful distraction from the heat and chaos going on around us.

Hampi is several hundred kilometers east of Goa and it was amazing to watch the landscape change. We’d gone from a hot coastal climate to really hot plains. It was flat, dry and pretty damn inhospitable. But when we got nearer our destination the landscape changed again, with great piles of massive boulders cropping up here and there. It often looked almost artificial, like the set of the Flintstones.

We were going to Hampi because it had sounded amazing in everything I’d read about it. It was the capital, Vijayangar, of a kingdom established in this region in the 13^th century and had grown to be one of the largest cities in the world by the late 16^th, with over 500,000 people. It was a centre of trading and culture and one of the largest Hindu kingdoms in history. And then, around 1565, the whole thing was razed to the ground in a battle that I won’t pretend to understand.

The train actually goes to Hospet, about half an hour from Hampi. We were pretty exhausted from the heat and the travel, but we jumped in a rickshaw and took the half hour ride to the town and the basic accommodations I’d booked, the Padma Guest House, highly recommended by Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet and the best thing available in Hampi. It was perfectly decent and we got an A/C room facing some of the ruins. The only real challenges were that the A/C was inadequate to fight the heat of the Hampi sun, which beat directly into our windows in the afternoon, and that the bathroom was connected to other parts of the building and was a complete sauna that heated the rest of the room if the door was left open. Both theoretically manageable issues.

We booked our rickshaw driver for the next day for the 5 hour guided tour, and booked the hotel room for two nights, knowing that the next evening we’d be catching a late bus and we wanted to keep a room to shower and relax in before the bus.

We got cleaned up and decided to go get a bite to eat. It was already around 5:00 so we went to the dinner restaurant recommended by LP and by the Cheeky Chapatti folks in Palolem, a place called the Mango Tree. The walk to the Mango Tree was amazing. We started by passing the main temple, which the Hampi Bazaar is built around. Lots of Indian people were there checking it out, but we didn’t stop in because we knew we’d see it in detail the next day. We then walked down along the river that runs through Hampi. It was simply beautiful. The piles of boulders surrounded a relatively lush area and the river ran through it all. The sun was low on the horizon. The whole thing was spectacular.

When we got to the Mango Tree it was just as we’d heard. An incredible setting overlooking the river, the perfect place to hang out and have a bite. The menu had an extensive listing of Indian veg options, plus lots of drinks. Since it had been a long hot day we ordered a bunch of drinks including a couple of milkshakes and lassis. (The milkshakes are fruit and milk, no ice cream. And lassis are made with curd instead of milk.) They were a bit sour, but delicious after a long day. Dinner was a couple of curries that were very tasty.

After dinner we went back to our hotel feeling very full. Time to lie down and let the curries settle. Except it never did. Colleen got hit first. She hit the washroom for a cool down shower and never made it. (Somewhat graphic details follow. Stop here if you’re faint of heart.) She lost her curry and felt terrible. Feeling ill after a spicy meal is not totally unique for Colleen, who doesn’t have a strong stomach, but this time was special. My curry made its return about an hour later, and I do have a strong stomach.

I won’t go into detail about all of this. Suffice to say that there were many trips to our sauna washroom throughout the night. Probably a dozen for me, maybe a half dozen for Colleen. I know I kept our neighbours and the hotel management awake for part of the night with my bellowing into the porcelain amplifier. The manager, a terribly nice young guy, actually stopped by the room at one point of the night, to see if we needed a doctor. We didn’t hear him though, probably too busy moaning.

Of all our travels to all the dodgy locations, I’ve only ever been truly ill once before while abroad, and that was to the awful resort area of Veradero. (Cuba is amazing and its people terrific. Veradero isn’t Cuba and is not worth visiting. You want a resort, go to a resort.) This night in Hampi was my worst night of travel ever.

A final day in Goa

2010-05-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

The 10^th of May was our last day in Goa. We didn’t have a lot planned, and that’s generally a good way to spend the day at the beach. Colleen got the day off to a good start with a private yoga session and an early morning swim in the ocean. We had breakfast at the Cheeky Chapatti restaurant, where I could get my preferred vacation food - lemon and sugar pancakes.

We returned to Bhakti Kutir, where we had to change rooms. Unfortunately, when they showed us our new room it wasn’t particularly lovely. It was open to the outside, so the mosquitos could get at us. The fan and the light switch seemed to be connected, so that if both were on at the same time the fan would go very slowly and become ineffective. That was a big challenge when it was as hot as it was. And the bathroom, which was outside with Indian style facilities, was shared with the bottom half of the “cottage”. Not so terrific. We tried looking in on a few other places in the area to see if they had space, but since it was the end of the season all spare rooms were either being torn down or were worse than the one we had. (And to be worse is saying a lot.) Money was not an issue, there was nothing to be had. I also tried calling a pretty cool looking place just North of us, which I’d spotted that morning reading a travel magazine's "hot list", but was never able to connect the call. Eventually we just decided to accept our fate and stay in the less than fabulous accommodations.

Lunch was at the Round Cube, so we could eat and watch the ocean. Then I spent some time online and on the phone, trying to book rooms in Hampi and Ooty, our next two destinations. We went for an afternoon swim. Cleared up our tab at Bhakti, since we had to leave early the next morning. Then had a nice dinner back at Cheeky’s. They had remembered our questions earlier about whether there were any good bakeries around, so that we could stock up for the next day’s journey, and had carrot cake ready for us. A nice touch.

We finished the day at the Oceanic Hotel, writing these blogs and catching up on important items, like Canucks score. (Oy!) Then it was back to Bhakti for a pretty miserable night making sure the mosquito netting was properly tucked in, sweating due to inadequate circulation, and just try to stay sane.

I'm frickin' dyin here

2010-05-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

No new updates. Colleen and I both got nasty ill last night from the lassis at the Mango Tree in Hampi. We're dying. It's been a long hot day today. The wimpy AC in our room can't beat the direct sunlight and 45 degree heat.

Frickin dyin.

Pictures are coming

2010-05-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

If you're following along with our trip, rest assured that photos are coming. Internet access at most places is painfully slow, so they're being added as we go. I'll be adding images chronologically, so it'll take a few days to catch up.

Valet parking and the green economy

2010-05-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

I spotted these two signs walking around Mumbai the other day and thought they were fabulous for completely different reasons.

The first just inspires confidence in their service. I wouldn't be leaving my car there.

This business has probably been around forever. If they were new they'd probably promote themselves as an environmentally sound business. Frankly, I'm not sure what you'd do with old "share forms, office records and unservicable materials", but there must be some sort of business there.

Puttering around Palolem

2010-05-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

There wasn’t much planned for May 9^th. Just hanging out around Palolem and enjoying a bit of sun and sand.

I woke up early and read in the hammock on the patio of our cottage. No one showed up for yoga, so I chatted with the instructor as he left. I used my bad stomach as an excuse for not showing up, and he suggested some remedies for India-belly. (Which, you should thank me, I’m not going to go into details about here, other than to say that it’s much better now. Thanks for your concern. And thank you Cipro®.)

Breakfast was at our place, which seems to be only semi-open for food. Kind of frustrating. Then we headed over to the travel agent’s to sort through our issues. We got them mostly resolved, although the trip to Ooty may be a bad idea. It’s a lot of time on Indian buses, including a “sleeper bus” without AC. We’re gonna stick it out though and see how it turns out – stay tuned.

We scootered to the next beach over – Patnem. It’s far less developed than Palolem and very nice. However the sand rises to a ridge and then drops to the shore, which makes for slightly “less perfect” beach. We stopped there for a read and a drink and considered a swim, but realized that the waves there are actually larger than at Palolem, where they’re already pretty damn big. Colleen did a little shopping to pick up some lightweight wraps and saris, and we moved on.

We went for a bit of a drive into a local town to hit an ATM. The traffic was a little more chaotic than we liked, and we decided to stick to the back roads on our little scooter. Only once so far have I tried to drive on the right side of the road, and I was going slowly at the time, but I don’t want to push my luck in traffic. You never know when 20 years of driving instinct is going to take over.

We also sorted through the problem of us being booted out of our room on the 10^th. Apparently we needed to ask the guy at the front desk when someone else was around, who could tell him to just put us into another room instead of tossing us out of the place altogether. A much better solution. Although we’ll see what the new room is like.

We found a lovely little lunch place run by an English couple called Cheeky Chapatti, or something like that. We only grabbed a small bite there for lunch, but we returned later for a very big dinner including their fabulous mojitos, king prawns, eggplant masala, and apple and mango crumble. Not cheap, but fabulous.

After lunch we went for a swim off Palolem. The water off of here is the Arabian Sea I believe. It feels like bath water and may be the warmest water I’ve encountered in any of my travels. There’s a bit of an undertow and, after some unpleasant experiences in the past, I’m pretty cautious, so we never ventured too far from the shore. Regardless I, along with many others, had poor enough timing to be standing at the wrong depth when some massive waves hit. I got the full churn and burn experience, and a lot of water up the nose and sand in the ears. Some poor Indian guy had just gotten in the water at the time the first wave hit and looked just stunned. He turned to me and said “Wow. That was a big wave.” I told him to turn around, just before the next one beat him down. He got to his feet before the third and final one hit, then struggled his way out of the water. That dude had very bad timing. I doubt he’s coming back.

We also discovered the only WiFi in Palolem, in a hotel called The Oceanic. It had a pool for Colleen to swim in while I updated our travel journal. Unfortunately, the pool turned out to be a little skudgy, and my laptop had run out of juice, but we knew where to go in the future.

That’s about it for the 10^th. Another day in a beautiful place. We have one more day in Goa with nothing planned. Should be perfect.

Waterfalls and driving through Goa

2010-05-10T05:07:00.000-07:00

We had met our driver, Franco, for our waterfall adventure the day before at the travel agents. When we’d mentioned that we’d like to get to the falls without there being a lot of people there he’d suggested that we leave fairly early in the morning, like 7 or 8. I’d gone for eight, and he’d pushed for seven. Going with the philosophy that one should trust their guide, I settled for seven.

When we got up that morning it felt pretty early and I was rather sore from the day before’s yoga session. Plus, my belly wasn’t doing so well – I had a very minor case of India-gut. But we were good to go. Franco showed up on time and we headed off to who-knew-where.

Colleen has always had a love for waterfalls. When she used to visit me in San Francisco we’d find them on treks around California. And we’ve made great hikes to falls in the past in Cuba, Indonesia and Thailand. It’s a bit of a vacation ritual.

Our drive to the falls was pretty interesting. First, we hadn’t had the opportunity to get breakfast before we left. Nothing is open in Palolem until much later in the morning. So after about 40 minutes driving Franco pulled us over in a small town so we could grab some breakfast samosas. We got several of them, some other bready things, and a Fanta and a Coke – all for less than $2. When I bit into my first one I discovered that it wasn’t my standard samosa – it was screaming spicy hot. I got a case of the spicy-hiccoughs, and was horrified to see Collen, who can’t stomach spicy food, eating hers. She seemed fine though, at which point Franko pointed out that what I’d chosen wasn’t a samosa, but some sort of Indian manliness test. (OK. He didn’t say that last bit.) The other doughy bread things sweety and tasty, he called them Bons, which may have just been his way of saying “bun” – we really couldn’t tell.

The other interesting part of the drive was the traffic. After about half an hour we started to pass dump trucks. And as we carried on they became more numerous, until it got to the point where the roads were simply clogged with them. There were thousands of them going in all directions. Franco explained that there are several mines in that part of Goa, and for the past several years the trucks have completely taken over the roads. There are trucks as far as you can see shipping minerals out of this region. From what I could understand it’s largely ore headed to China. The trucks go from morning to night, 8 months of the year, coming off the roads only during monsoon season. The poor people who had nice homes by the road now have homes beside a constant traffic jam of diesel fumes and mining dust. It was complete chaos, and the thought of that amount of “stuff” being removed from this province every day was somewhat mindboggling and a little depressing. I realize that it’s the way of the world, and that it provides good paying jobs in a pretty poor part of this relatively poor country, but actually being in it was a very different experience.

It turned out that this was part of the reason why Franko had wanted to leave so early, so we could avoid the worst of the mining traffic. Even so, he zipped in and out of the traffic, because if we just went with the flow it would have taken hours. It’s an interesting experience to be headed around a corner and seeing two mining dump trucks coming at you, passing one another and taking up the entire road. It was the first time driving in India where our driver has actually pulled over to get the hell out of the way.

Franko took us as far as Colem, where we chartered an off-road Land Cruiser-ish vehicle for the rest of the ride to Dudhsagar Falls. (And no, don’t ask me how to pronounce that.) The vehicle chartering operation seemed very dodgy, with the boss-man sitting on the side of the road collecting for the drivers and guides, but there were no other options. And you definitely needed a proper vehicle for this ride. Even at this time of year, when it hasn’t rained for months, we were driving through rivers and the roads were very badly beaten up. It was a pretty cool 40 minute trip in, and I’m not sure how those vehicles do it every day.

At the end it was a short hike to Dudhsagar Falls. They’re the second highest in India, and a pretty spectacular sight. Again, thanks to Franco’s timing, we’d arrived early enough to be the first people there. Colleen had brought her bathing suit and immediately jumped in to swim in the pool at the base of the falls. I made my way in a few minutes later. Franko had warned us that the water was quite cold, so I was waiting for the shock, but it turned out to be “India cold” not cold cold. It was gorgeous.

I don’t really like swimming. For me it’s just an ongoing battle to not drown, which takes all the pleasure out of it. On the other hand, Colleen loves swimming and is quite content to paddle around for hours. So she swam around the base of the falls, finding places where there were rocks on the bottom that I could stand on. Then she’d signal to me and I’d swim to the next rock. It was a good solution for both of us.

After a bit more people arrived at the falls. I got out to take a few photos and to read the sign that listed all the people who had drowned there over the past decade. (There were lots, but I decided it was rather poor form to take a photo of the sign. Karma and all.) Our guide came up to me to make his case, rather persistently, that we should be sure to tip him and his partner very well as the money they made right now would have to cover them throughout the off season. He wasn’t wrong, but it was disappointing to have a pretty cool experience put off a bit by someone asking for money. (I’m sure it won’t be the last time it happens here.) He also mentioned that we had to tip him in the vehicle, ‘cause his boss would take half if he saw someone give him money outside of the car.

On the drive back along the bumpy road we passed many more off road vehicles on their way up. It would be crowded at the falls before long. And at one of the last river crossings before we left the park the locals had taken over the river for a bit of fun in the water, kayaking and taking paddle boats through the first few turns and wading through the water with their families.

Franko was surprised to see us back in town as early was we were, but was happy to head out. Unfortunately, it was still busy truck time on the way back. We felt tiny in our taxi, amongst all the huge dump trucks. And, in true Indian fashion, there didn’t seem to be an rationale behind the flow of traffic, leading to some pretty good snarls that we were in the middle of. Thousands of trucks along dozens of kilometers. It’s a pretty amazing sight.

When we got back to Palolem we grabbed a late lunch down on the beach. Colleen went for a bit of a swim and I happily finished one of the books I’d brought – A Good Walk Spoiled by John Feinstein. A non-fiction account of life on the PGA tour. It was a pretty interesting read, but it’s gotten rather dated since it was first published, before Tiger had his massive impact on the sport.

As an aside, I also read Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy on the first days of our trip. I love Chuck’s books, but this one was a little trying. It’s a writing accomplishment, everything is in the form of a broken English North Korean-esque terrorist diary. But that doesn’t necessarily make for good reading.

Later we did some trip planning. We realized that getting to Ooty was not going to be as easy as the travel agent had suggested, and that we needed to pay her a return visit. We were also informed that we couldn’t extend our hotel stay as long as we needed to, as someone had already reserved our cottage as of Monday. Neither were a big deal, but they needed some figuring out.

Dinner was at a restaurant that Franko had recommended. A few minutes after ordering the power went out, which meant that the fans all died. Even outdoors at this time of year it was stifling, and dinner was spent in a constant sweat. The food was fine, but we were happy to get out of there and call it a day.

Yoga and other silly pursuits

2010-05-10T05:06:00.000-07:00

I have sadly discovered that as I grow older my body has become much less flexible. So, on our first morning in Goa, I decided to avail myself of our place’s morning yoga sessions. I may be the only Vancouverite who has never done yoga, and this was an interesting place for my first time. Our session was outside in a small cement area that they’ve built for this purpose. It’s a terrific setting, covered by the jungle canopy, with the sounds of all the local birds accompanying us. There were five participants, including Colleen and I, and of course there was the Indian yoga instructor, who was super bendy flexy. I enjoyed the class, although I wasn’t able to get fully into a lot of the poses, and I did have one falling incident when I tried to do with my right arm what my left arm was supposed to be doing, but overall, if I can’t quite call it fun, it was an interesting experience. And I’m sure it can’t hurt my golf game.

Back home Colleen often goes to “runners yoga”. I was running pretty regularly until late last year, when I damaged my foot, and I can understand the appeal of runners yoga. But I don’t understand why no one seems to have “golfers yoga”. I’ll bet there’d be a fair bit of appeal to us aging guys whose bodies don’t bend the way they used to, and who’d love to get another 10 yards out of their drives.

After yoga we grabbed a breakfast on the beach at the same place we’d had dinner the night before, Round Cube, and then didn’t make much progress from there. I had a good book, I had a great seat in the shade, and I was pretty happy. Colleen went in for a swim a few times and we were content to hang out there for several hours.

That afternoon we went over to one of the many travel agents who line the two streets of Palolem to plan our next stages. We had a pretty good idea of where we wanted to go next, none of which was terribly original. Like most places, there tends to be a standard travelers route. The challenge was that, even though it’s the off season for tourism, it’s the high season for travel for Indians, being the period when they tend to travel home to visit their families. So trains tend to be full, which makes moving on challenging.

We found a seat out of Goa and on to our next destination, Hampi, for Tuesday, the 11^th. We weren’t terribly pleased with that at first, but then realized that we were just going to be forced to stay on a beach for a couple of extra days, which is a pretty good thing. We’d stay in Hampa for a day or so, then head to Bangalore where we’ll catch a train to Ooty for a few days. Then back north to Bangalore where we’ll fly south to Kerala. We’ll spend the remainder of our time there, flying back to Mumbai on the 21^st to catch our flight home early on the morning of the 22^nd.

While at the travel agent we’d also booked a trip for the next day to visit some waterfalls and we’d planned for a houseboat trip in Kerala, one of the apparent “must do’s”. We felt pretty good having that all sorted out. It had gotten fairly late and we had missed lunch, so we went back to our place to freshen up then back to the village to have dinner on the beach at a place called Cuba. The food was great and the service was terrible, the opposite of the way things are in the real Cuba. Lovely irony.

Our second day in Goa had been a good one. Nothing terribly interesting, just a really good relaxing day. The way some of your vacation should be.

Arriving in Goa

2010-05-09T04:09:00.000-07:00

I learned my lesson on the train down to Goa - Don't get too far away from the train when it stops at a station. There's no warning when it goes again. It just goes. Fortunately, I was able to leap on. It would have been a little odd for Colleen to wake up the next morning with me no longer aboard.

We arrived in Goa after the overnight train ride somewhat refreshed but not totally there. It had been a long night and it was hot and muggy out. We had booked a hotel in the Goan capital of Panaji ahead of time on Hotels.com and were looking forward to visiting the town. It was supposed to have a nice Portuguese influence and be a cool place to check out.

When we got to our hotel, The Ginger, they didn't have our reservation. I could spend the next couple of paragraphs ranting, but I'll save it to say that after 45 minutes sitting in their lobby and downloading the confirmation for them they finally said they had our room, but they needed another RS500 to complete the reservation. That probably would have been fine at the start, after all it's only $10, but we were so fed up with their whole process and lack of service that we just walked out of the hotel and caught a cab for our next destination, Palolem.

We did get the cabbie to drive through Panaji and stop so we could grab some lunch. It appeared to be a nice enough town, but we don't feel like we missed out on anything.

Our cabbie drove us the hour and a half down the coast to Palolem. We hadn't made a reservation and, knowing that we're here in the off season, we knew we might be in trouble, but our driver was willing to poke around into a couple of places. The first place we went was closed. And the second was very scary. But the third, a place called Bhakti Kutir, showed us around and had lovely rooms. We expected to pay a premium, but when we asked how much they gave us a dirt cheap price, saying that the rates were low since it was the off season. Nice! Things were working out in our favour for a change.

We checked in, spoke to a guy about getting a motorbike for the next few days, and headed down to the beach. It's a very nice crescent shaped beach with huts built all along the shore. Apparently the law here is that there are no permanent buildings allowed within 200M of the shore, which means that every year all the buildings get torn down in May and rebuilt after the monsoons. Our building, not being within 200M of the shore (although I suspect it is) didn't have to follow those rules. Apparently they mean business with this law. We were told that a few years ago owners disregarded the law and the government rolled in with bulldozers, taking it all down. As a result, the beach huts now are extremely basic, but the temporary nature of things gives the town a pretty cool feel.

We grabbed a dinner that evening at one of the many beach restaurants along the shore, the Round Cube. The food was terrific and the service was entertaining. We enjoyed it and planned to go back.

After dinner it was back to our place for a good night's sleep. After the night train the day before we needed it.

We'd made it to Goa and to a beach. This was one of Colleen's key criteria for this trip, after spending the last 7 months working with a dog sledding operation in the Yukon. It's lovely and hot and a tropical paradise. A great spot to be for a few days.

More Mumbai, TBWA, Elephanta & a Train

2010-05-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

Day two in Mumbai ended with a dinner at a pretty decent Indian restaurant near our hotel. We haven't felt particularly welcome in most of the places where we at in Mumbai, but I suppose that's the fate of travellers in big cities.

The next morning, our last in Mumbai, we had breakfast at Cafe Leopold. The food was not much better than our hotel but the coffee was great. We then went back to the hotel to pack up. We had two things planned that day. The first was to drop in on TBWA\Mumbai and the second was to take a trip to Elephant Island. I had tried to give TBWA a call to see if a visit was cool, but hadn't been successful in having a decent conversation over the phone. So we decided to just drop in.

We took a cab over to the district listed on the TBWA\ website, Worli. It was about a 40 minute drive and our driver, once in the district, clearly had no idea where he was going. We slowed down to ask for directions several times. Silly me, I was looking for the exterior of a building that, in my mind, should house a global ad agency. What we ended up at was what looked like a pretty run down factory area in a less than terrific part of Mumbai. I wasn't sure I was in the right place, but the building said "Paragon" on the outside, and that was all I had to go on.

It turned out we were in the right spot. Once inside it felt very much like an ad agency, with the polished concrete floors and open work space. I went in and announced myself, knowing full well that just dropping in on an agency is terribly inconvenient for all those trying to get through their day. But the folks at TBWA\Mumbai were wonderful and welcoming. Colleen was with me and, of course, we had to sit for a bit in the lobby. We were probably offered coffee and tea a half dozen times my their fabulous receptionist, Monica. Then a very pleasant women came by to give us the tour. She introduced me to their head of planning, who I had a great chat with. He knew a fair bit about the Indo-Canadian population of Vancouver, which surprised the hell out of me. And I met their senior planner, who apparently is a voracious traveller and was going to give me some advice on our trip. Then I spent some time with their Managing Director, Nirmalya Sen, who provided interesting insights on the Indian ad business and TBWA\'s role within it. He, and the others, were very generous with their time and I had a terrific visit.

Afterwards we climbed in a cab and headed back to our base neighborhood. We had lunch at a pretty touristy place then headed over to the Gate of India to catch a boat over to Elephanta Island, about an hour's ride across Mumbai Harbour. We booked our ticket and followed the crowds down the pier to climb on board a pretty dodgy looking craft. Colleen told me to hang onto her if the ship went down, 'cause we could see the three sad PFDs tied to the roof.

On the boat ride over I sparked up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me on the boat whom I'd heard speaking English on his mobile. It turned out that he was a Japanese guy, but had spent time in Boston and Texas, so he had a pretty interesting accent. We got to talking about our professions. He said that he was in the import business in Japan and, after further discussion, was in the missile import business. Not something I know anything about, but pretty interesting. Colleen was sitting next to me and thought the Japanese guy had said he was in the miso import business. Miso / Missile. A common mistake.

We hung out with Ugawa, the guy's name, for the rest of the trip to Elephanta Island. When we got there a tour guide approached us and let us know that he'd be showing us around the island. We asked how much. Rs 650. It was highway robbery in this country, but also not worth negotiating. We took him up on it and were given the history.

Elephanta Island has several caves carved into it dating back to the 5th Century. These caves were carved into the basalt, and the most impressive of them include Hindu statues and shrines. The biggest

and most important cave has eight shrines showing Shiva in different forms. To be honest, I find Hinduism very confusing and don't want to get into explanations, 'cause I'm sure I'd be wrong. But it was very interesting checking out the various iterations of the many gods including the aforementioned Shiva and Ganesh.

The island was discovered by Portugese explorers in the 17th century. Sadly, the did a pretty good job of messing up many of the shrines, and had tried to remove the pillars of the caves in hope that the whole thing would collapse. Apparently they also used Shiva for target practice. Our guide seemed pretty understanding, just saying that those were other times with different understandings. On the other hand, he also said that he'd only had one Portuguese visitor in his career.

After walking around the island we caught the boat back to Mumbai. We'd been going for about 5 minutes before our boat's problems became apparent - we weren't moving and there seemed to be a pretty good commotion coming from the engine room. Fortunately, we weren't sinking and we weren't on fire, but we were going nowhere fast. About half an hour later another ship returning from Elephanta tossed us a line and towed us back to Mumbai. The hour long return trip took well over two hours, but it was a nice enough day and we were fine.

After our return to Mumbai we grabbed dinner with Ogawa and then went our separate ways. We went back to our hotel and our stored bags, where the proprietor was kind enough to let us have a room to shower and clean up in. We then caught a cab to Victoria Station (CST), to catch the overnight train to Goa.

I've mentioned before the chaos of CST. Now we had to navigate it to catch our train. We kept our heads down, ignored most people talking to us, got directions from a rail cop, and found what we thought was our platform. We put our bags down to relax. Then, a few minutes later, we got up to find our way to our real platform.

It seems to take real skill to figure out the Indian train system. Part of the trick may be in following the other white folks, who are going to the same place. When the train came in it was amazing / terrifying to watch the locals cram onboard the still moving train. I wouldn't have wanted to be in that crowd. As it was, it was hard enough to find the car that we were supposed to be in, A1, the second class AC car. Very basic and very crowded, but our home for the night.

We were in a small space with a couple of Danes. Frankly, I was tired enough to just climb up on my bunk and pass out right after the train started. The sheets looked semi-clean (more semi than clean) and I was exhausted, still trying to get used to the time zone difference. It was a pretty sleepless night, but we made good time and didn't have to waste a day of our vacation travelling from one spot to the next.

Next stop - Madgaon, Goa.

still in bombay

2010-05-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

The rest of our second day in Mumbai. Not a tonne to report. It’s a huge, bustling, crazy city. And it’s hot. Very hot. And humid.

We went over to the Gate of India, built for King George V’s royal visit of 1911 and was finished in 1924 and was where the English left from in 1948. It’s an impressive arch and worth seeing, but there’s really no reason to spend much time there. Across the street is the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is one of the places the terrorists hit back in 2008. It’s a massive impressive hotel, and we made our way through significant security to get in there, but much of it is closed for renovations. So, in the end it’s just a hotel.

We grabbed a bite nearby and decided to see if we could catch a train out of Mumbai and down to Goa a day early. We caught a cab to Victoria Station where the Foreign Ticket guy informed us that today’s train was totally full in all classes. So we’re sticking it out for another day.

We grabbed a late lunch at Relish, which was far more of a walk than anticipated. And Colleen is quickly learning that even mild food here can be pretty damn spicy. Delicious, but spicy. Then we headed over to see the harbour. It’s nasty polluted, but fairly impressive, with a massive seawall built around the city protected by giant cement jacks.

The architecture of this city is fascinating. Much of it resembles the India that I expected, except it’s crumbling all around. The rest feels like Soviet era bureaucrat buildings. It’s a beautiful but somewhat depressing combination.

After lunch we sorted through some trip planning. We've decided not to go to the Andamans or Lakshadweep. This took a lot of debate, but we're feeling good about the decision. We'll stick to our plan for tomorrow and see more of India, rather than enjoy some island paradise. Tough call.

On the road again

2010-05-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

We left Vancouver on Saturday morning for our latest adventure. We're off to India for three weeks. A big thanks goes out to Victoria for giving us a ride to the airport at an ungodly early hour.

A big thanks also goes out to Andrea and Jim at TBWA\Vancouver for letting me disappear for so long. Thanks guys.

We dined at the airport Milestones then caught the first leg of our trip, Vancouver to Toronto via Air Canada. Toronto to Brussels was our next leg, after a two hour layover. We were with Jet Airways, which I had read was a pretty good airline, but was actually awful. The seats were tiny and the service was pretty bad. They were very understaffed and very slow. A request for a Coke with dinner was answered with a "I'll see what I can do" and a 20 minute wait. Very odd.

We had a 3 hour wait in Brussels for our next leg to Mumbai. By this time we were pretty tired, but still eager to go. The Brussels airport is a terrific pan-European hub, with terribly Euro looking people who all speak far too many languages and make us feel inadequate. While we sat there waiting for our plane we were able to watch them open the cowling on the engines of our aircraft and do repairs. Not terribly encouraging. Not surprisingly, our flight was delayed by an hour and a bit, but eventually we got underway again with Jet Airways bound for Bombay Airport. They were a little better this time, but still not great. When we got near Mumbai our pilot announced that we'd been put in a queue and would have to wait for another hour to land. Nice!

After 30 hours we finally arrived at Bombay Airport. After such a long trip I was glad that I'd arranged for car service and made reservations at a decent hotel. When we left the airport we walked around the circle where all the guys stand with their signs with the names of the people who they are there to pick up. Our name wasn't on any of them. Our car service wasn't there. It was 2:00 AM and we'd need to get a Mumbai cab to our hotel. It was about 30 degrees out and I didn't want to deal with the chaos. The joys of travel.

We got a cab to our hotel, but when I mentioned my name and reservation they looked confused. They were full for the night and didn't have any reservation under my name. When they asked if I had a confirmation I pulled out my laptop and pulled up the e-mail. I realized immediately my error, I'd made the reservation for April 2nd, not May. Crap!

The guy at the hotel was great. He could have easily turned us away. They said they didn't have a room, but he miraculously found us a spare room at the top of the building. At 3:00 AM, after travelling for a day and a half, I wasn't going to be picky. The AC didn't work well, and there was no TP, but it was just fine after my screw-up. (Which also explained the lack of car service. Some poor guy was probably at the airport to meet us in early April. Sorry dude!) Our theory was that the room was for the staff, since several seemed to be sleeping in the stairwell (Welcome to India), but it was also nicely prepared and actually quite pleasant. We would have been happy to stay there a few days.

The next morning, after a few hours of sleep, we had breakfast at the hotel. When the people in the restaurant asked us for our room number, to charge breakfast, we told them we were in room 309. They looked at us funny and said there was no such room. They didn't believe us until we showed them our room key. This happened a few times. I'd love to know what that room was really for.

Later, we asked the hotel if we could stay. Sadly, no, they were all booked, but they were happy to set us up in their sister hotel, the Regent. Colleen and I debated it, since it didn't sound great, but I didn't want to be hotel hunting when I was so tired, so we took it.

We went over to the Regent. It looked OK, but not great. We got room 411, which meant we took the elevator to the 4th floor and then stairs up to the 5th where we got another mystery room. I don't think this was a normal room for guests either. Three single beds and a very beat up paint job. That's the punishment I get for not being able to read a calendar. But it's fine and I'm not complaining, 'cause we've got a room and it's clean and the beds are decent.

Our biggest challenge yesterday was booking a ticket out of Mumbai. Our next destination is Goa, to the south, and I thought that taking an overnight train down there would be a pretty cool way to see the countryside. We made our way over to Victoria Station (aka CST) and found the Foreigner Ticket Booking window. We filled out the forms and waited in the yellow Foreigner benches. Eventually we got to the front of the line, only to be informed that first class was all sold out, but there were a few tickets left in second. We happily took them when we learned that most of the trains at this time were already sold out, but that a few tickets were set aside for tourists.

It sounds sad, but by the time we'd sorted out the tickets we were exhausted. We hadn't slept well, and the walk over to the station was a sensory overload. Mumbai has 16 million people in it, 2.5 million go through CST every day, the streets are pure chaos with black and yellow cabs honking, and it's 40 degrees out. There are no crosswalks to speak of, so you dodge traffic and hope for the best. The poverty is pretty amazing, with people sleeping on the sidewalks all over the place, but no worse than we'd expected and no worse than in other countries we've been. The building are beautiful but run down. The food looks delicious, but we haven't had a chance to dive in properly yet.

After CST we needed to rest. We headed to a restaurant called Moshe's, which served a mix of global foods and delicious cold drinks. We pigged out then headed back to the hotel to crash out, watch global TV, plan our next steps, and nap but try to not fall asleep. We had to deal with our jet lag.

We weren't hungry for dinner, but we found a great little place for more cold drinks and apple crumble. Then we were ready to finally head back to sleep.

This morning we dined in our terrible hotel dining room, with the sound of construction happening right beside us. We got out of there to have coffee at the much more pleasant and touristy Cafe Leopold.

We then went hunting for WiFi access to let friends and family know we'd arrived OK. For one of the world's tech hubs, WiFi is somewhat hard to find here. In one coffee shop we asked a guy on a computer where to find it, and he directed us to the Kala Ghoda Cafe near Rhythm House.

His directions were bad, but after wandering around the block a few times we found it. It's perfect. A tiny little place with painted brick walls. I don't think they're looking for tourist Internet users, but it's an ideal spot for AC and Internet.

We're off now to hit a few more of the Mumbai highlights. Stay tuned for more updates.

India question - What's up with all the guys with the bad red hair dye jobs. It seems very common and isn't a young person thing.

Nice One Golf Town

2010-04-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

(warning - golf club lingo follows)

So I had to retire my old driver today. I'd been using a TaylorMade R580XD for the past several years, but the other day it developed a crack on the face. I thought it was a scratch at first, but then it expanded and was clearly cracked. I used it twice on the weekend, but after my drive on 18 today where the vibrations were painful, I thought it best (and safest) to go get a new one. Plus, who knows how many yards I was giving up every time I hit the ball.

So I went to GolfTown this evening to buy a driver. I'd looked online at GolfDigest's Hot List and had decided that the TaylorMade R9-460 or the Ping G15 would be right for me. I grabbed the two of them and was going to proceed to the hitting matts. But then a Golf Town employee asked me if I'd like to maybe try hitting a couple of other drivers as well. Knowing what I'd been using before, he recommended two other TaylorMade drivers, one for $100 and one for $150 less than the two that I was going to demo.

In the end, I actually bought the more expensive of the two that the employee had recommended, saving myself $100 vs. the ones that I was ready to buy. What a great shopping experience. And that's why I love Golf Town. They do what's right for me, not for their commission.

And in the long run it works for them. Because I'll go there to get my next set of irons. And because I also bought a golf bag this afternoon, which more than offset the savings on my driver. So, by being helpful and not pushy they actually received a much greater share of my wallet. Lots of retailers could learn a lesson there.

Nice one Golf Town.

Here's my new driver:

Self-Promo - Our work for YMCA

2010-03-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

My agency, TBWA\Vancouver, has just released the first pieces of a new campaign for the YMCA of Greater Vancouver. Wild postings have gone up around town driving people to wheredidcommunitygo.com, intended to start the conversation about community and the Y's role. It's been a great experience digging into the Y's values and getting to the core of what the brand is all about.

There are a lot more elements to come, ranging from good ol' advertising to some pretty great guerrilla stuff. And, if you look at any of the print work you'll see it uses a font we created based on copywriter Mia Thomsett's handwriting, which I thought was pretty cool.

This all leads up to the opening of the amazing new Robert Lee YMCA in downtown Vancouver in May.

Check out the video on the site above.

Cut to the chase

2010-03-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

We had a new business meeting on Friday afternoon. And I'd been at work putting together this customized credentials presentation until pretty late the night before. It addressed all their requirements and looked pretty slick, if I do say so.

So, we're about 1/2 way through the presentation when the president of the company that we were meeting with says - "Ok, Ok. I get it. You guys do good work. And you're just going to show me more good work. I don't think we need to see any more."

I was surprised as hell. We hadn't shown them some of the specifics that they had asked to see yet. On the other hand, he was totally right. We were just going to show him more great work with great results to back it up. He knew where this was going.

So he decided to just cut the crap and get to the point. I loved it. We can dance around each other, or we can just sit down and have an honest conversation about what we need and how we might be able to work together. The latter is so much more efficient and effective.

I hope we get to work with those guys. Maybe at some point that approach might be a challenge, but these days it's also pretty refreshing.

Great Walmart Ad

2010-01-25T23:36:00.001-08:00

I've never liked Walmart ads. In fact, they've almost all been absolutely horrible. They drive me away from the retailer. I know, I'm not the target audience, but still, their ads are almost always terrible.

Then, yesterday, I saw this. It made me laugh out loud.

Way to go Walmart. I just might like you a bit more.

Wes Anderson makes me happy

2010-01-22T23:40:00.000-08:00

My favourite film of '09 was The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It was beautiful and it simply made me happy. It's a wonderful movie.

Wes Anderson was recognized by the National Board of Review with an award for Special Filmmaking Achievement. He animated his acceptance:

I love it. Like the film, it has a fabulously personal touch.

Thanks to AdHack for spotting this.

p.s. My second and third favourite films of '09 were Hurt Locker and District 9.

Fun w/ Volvo

2010-01-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

I like this. It's fun.

I have lots of questions though. Like what happens when the guy discovers that she's not his wife. How long will he go on with this charade? Frankly, I suspect that he might go with it for quite a while.

On a more professional note - I always admire advertisers who aren't afraid to make fun of their customers a bit. In this spot, you could criticize it for not making the first driver more self aware that his car and his wife have changed. But they didn't worry about that. They made him somewhat self occupied, and it works. Particularly since the other three characters in the spot, all of whom are also riding in Volvos, don't have their heads up their bums as much as the first guy.

Our customers don't always take themselves so seriously. We're all boneheads at one point or another. That's why everyone loves Homer J. And I'll bet that Volvo customers have been described in some brief somewhere as people who can laugh at themselves. It's great when we can all relax a bit and remember that an ad is often just a bit of fun, not necessarily a dramatic statement.

Nice work Arnold and Volvo.

The Olympic Store

2010-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

I popped into the Olympic Superstore at the Bay downtown yesterday evening.

It's actually rather impressive. There are lots of pretty nice items. The knit sweaters are very well done, although perhaps not particularly Olympic-y.

They're sold out of certain items, like kids red hoodies, boys, size 10/12. But they've got lots of the red gloves in. I'm a fan of the red gloves, 'cause they're an Olympic item that anyone can afford. ($10)

On the other hand, some prices are totally out of control. For example, the Team Canada hockey jerseys are going for $400. That's crazy. Does this look like a $400 jersey?

I think I'll stick with the Sidney Crosby signed jersey I got a few years ago, when I did a spot with him for TELUS.

I was also pretty impressed with the Bay's heritage corner. They've don't a great job with the canoes. And I've always love the Bay blanket. I've got one in storage somewhere that I've got to get out.

There's also a Coke pin trading location. I get the feeling that there's a strong correlation between pin traders and fantasy gamers. It's a cool little set-up and I suppose everyone needs a hobby.

Finally, I couldn't resist getting myself a Team Canada hoodie. I may not be terribly happy about how this whole Olympics thing has gone, or how it's been for business, but I'm still in the Games spirit. It seems like a pretty good quality product, for only $50. I suspect everyone will be wearing them in a few weeks.

Coke Bottle Design History

2010-01-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

I spotted this image on pete.com the other day and thought it was pretty cool.

Check out that original bottle on the far left. How cool is that? With a rounded glass top. I would absolutely buy a beverage that came in a bottle like that.

And the third one across with a wide middle and narrow bottom. Maybe not terribly stable, but amazing looking.

I'm not going to say that Coke's bottle has gotten worse. I still love their current iconic design. But I do love these super retro bottles. It'd be amazing if they'd roll one of them out for a special edition some time.

On a related note - I loved what Coke did with their can design a couple of years ago. They decided to take their can and remove all the frou-frou elements. They went back to the basics, and it looked great. Like so many things in design, less was more.

Check it out:

5 Minute Book Review - All The Pretty Horses

2010-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

I was given a copy of All The Pretty Horses for Christmas. The book was published almost two decades ago.

I've never read anything by Cormac McCarthy before. What an experience. This is one of those books that you put down and wonder how the author writes something like that. He creates an incredible world that is completely engaging. And he writes with a tempo and style the draws you in absolutely.

It's funny. There's a fair bit of Spanish dialogue in the book, and I don't speak Spanish. This was frustrating at first, but it just added to the feeling of authenticity and, by the end, while still troubled about the fact that I was missing things, I had come to respect the technique. The only real challenge is that having chunks of a book that you can't read makes you pause and think about the fact that you're still reading, rather than allow you to be completely absorbed by the book.

It's a cowboy story. It's an adventure. It's got a romance angle. But sometimes all those become secondary simply to the incredible writing ability of McCarthy. You take a break and think about how someone can write like this. I can't describe it, but if you're reading my blog I'd recommend that you give it a try.

This was the first in a trilogy. I'll be going to get the next one soon.

5 Minute Book Review - Generation A

2010-01-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

I finished reading Generation A last week.

I think I've read all of Douglas Coupland's books over the years, with the possible exception of one, since Generation X first came out while I was a senior in high school. I've always enjoyed his work and, of course, there's always that bit of extra fun when reading books that take place in your neighborhood. (I can't remember which book it was in, but I recall Coupland visualizing nuclear armageddon in West Van, which resonated particularly well with me.)

One part of Coupland's books has always bugged me a bit. He creates engaging characters in modern reasonable or semi-reasonable situations. But the end of his books almost always take on a surrealistic semi-spiritual aspect, which seems inconsistent with the rest of the book.

The positive of Generation A was that Coupland infused this feeling throughout the book, instead of just jamming it in at the end. It created an engaging relationship with the characters, which I really enjoyed.

It's not a terribly challenging read. It's great how the characters all come together, but there's a cultural sameness that feels a little inappropriate. Sure, you bring a Canadian, a Kiwi, a Frenchman and and American together and you can have a connection. And Coupland throws in an Indian who works at a A&F call centre, called Apu, so that he can have the cultural knowledge as well. It all feels a little too convenient and perhaps not quite sophisticated enough.

It's a good story. A pleasant read. One of the top 5 from Coupland. I'd still recommend it.

Google's foresight

2010-01-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

I just discovered Google's amazing ability to predict what I'm about to type. For some very generic terms such as "why do" Google has some pretty interesting predictions:

I'd love to know what is causing people to enter these terms. Are scores of people really entering "Where are my keys" into Google? Is it helping?

Do people really want to know why men have nipples? I suspect that Mr. Dawkins has a good answer for that one.

And I'm not even touching the top answer in the Why Does category, but I am curious how the hell that would get Google's top ranking for things people are looking for. What's going on here?

I'm fully amused by this.

Pie

2010-01-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

A little secret about me. I enjoy making pies. I've tried a few different varieties, but apple is my standby.

Here's the pies I made on Saturday.

Why am I posting my pies on my blog? 'Cause they're tasty.

5 Minute Book Review - Survivor

2010-01-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

I just finished Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor. It was a Christmas gift from my good friend Victoria.

I don't read enough fiction. I'm not sure why, since I enjoy a good fiction book so much, but I tend towards non-fiction business/marketingy books.

Survivor was fabulous. It was the kind of book that I read late into the night, then get up the next morning and grab it, then read it at night again. Then it's done.

This isn't a terribly deep comment about the book, but I loved the fact that the page numbering started at the end and worked its way down to page 1. What a great way of looking at things. I often calculate how many pages I have left in a book. This had already done it for me. And, since a lot of the book revolved around a countdown to the end, this fit wonderfully with the book's plot.

Chuck Palahniuk has a wonderful way of looking into the ridiculousness of our modern society. He hits our culture in its soft spot repeatedly.

I'd happily recommend this one to someone looking for an enjoyable, fun, not overly deep read.

5 Minute Book Review - Hot, Flat and Crowded

2010-01-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

I just finished Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman the other day.

On the one hand, I really enjoyed this book. I was inspired by the thinking around the environmental challenges we face but, more than anything, it was fabulous that Mr. Friedman put forward a recommendation as to how we can address the issue. The "energy climate crisis", as he refers to it, is so huge and daunting that it's easy to consider it insurmountable. To have the audacity to make a recommendation as to what should be done should be applauded.

While I was reading this book I was also involved in the BC Hydro new business process at TBWA\Vancouver. I can't imagine a better complement to that work. The message behind Hot, Flat and Crowded, about the challenge we face in energy generation and consumption, combined with the need to change energy production and demand, was inspiring while we were working late every day to resolve some of those issues on a local level.

On the other hand, Hot, Flat and Crowded is yet another of those business books that takes 400 pages to get across a message that should be said in 200. It was an interesting and inspiring read, but could be tightened up a great deal. I suppose Mr. Friedman wanted to make full use of all his research, but c'mon.

Unoriginal voiceovers

2010-01-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

So, on Monday Walter Cronkite's voiceover for the introduction of the CBS Evening News was replaced. Mr. Cronkite died six months ago, so it makes a bit (but maybe not a lot) of sense that they replaced him.

So who filled the void? Did they pick some other incredibly well respected newscaster. No, they did not. Instead, they selected Morgan Freeman.

What the hell?

I love Morgan Freeman as an actor. And the first person you think of when you need someone to do a voiceover is Mr. Freeman. He sounds so serious and thoughtful, yet kind. But don't you think that could have thought a little longer and come up with someone a little less obvious.

Mr. Freeman does the voiceover for everything. I think it started with The Shawshank Redemption, one of my all time favourites. March of the Penguins was fabulous. And these days he's even the voice of Visa's Go campaign.

I've got nothing against the man. But when someone is this obvious of a choice, it probably means they're the wrong choice.

Running the Dogs

2010-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm staying at Uncommon Journey's while up in the Yukon. It's a terrific place and the owners, Rod and Martha, have been wonderfully welcoming. And Chris, the Ops Manager, has let me get in the way from time to time.

Rod invited me to come dogsledding with him the other day. I'd done it once before and was eager to take him up on the offer. It's a great experience to let the dogs carry you through the woods. It had snowed the night before, settling on the trees that were already covered with hoar frost, creating stunning scenery. And it was clear by the time we got out, giving us a terrific view of the surrounding hills.

It's chaos getting the dogs hooked up to the sled. It takes a while to get used to the noise of 60 dogs barking, all of them excited and wanting to go for a run. Our group of three could only take 23 dogs, each of which needed to be harnessed and then bunny-hopped to the sled, where they would howl in anticipation of the run ahead. But once we got them hooked up, we took off into the quiet of the run. It was a great day.

Here are some shots of our trip:

Here's a video of my dogs taking a bit of a break, while Rod makes adjustments to his team:

It was a great day.

A Kluane New Year

2010-01-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

As part of my holiday Whitehorse, Yukon adventure Colleen and I decided to head over to Haines Junction on New Years Eve.

We left shortly after noon and made the 150km drive. Cruising along the highways up here is beautiful. And my rental car seems to have pretty good snow tires. It was a great drive.

Haines Junction is at the entrance to Kluane National Park, a huge parkland that crosses the Canada/US border and becomes the Wrangell-St. Elias park in the US. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Unlike most southern National Parks (e.g. Banff), you can't just drive through Kluane. If you want to experience it beyond just seeing it from the outskirts you've got to get out of your car and hike. It was -30, so there wasn't going to be much hiking, just some quick poses and then back into the car ASAP.

Haines Junction is a very small town. Population 800 - and I suspect that that's in the summer. Most of the motels and restaurants were closed for the winter. But we had lunch at a little grill where the staff were very welcoming. Aussie, the manager, let us know that if we were there that evening we should show up to the Alcan lounge, where there was free food and drink to celebrate the New Year.

A few hours later, after driving around the park a bit more, we decided to spend New Years Eve in Haines Junction. We got a room at the Cozy Corner, which was just fine for a small town motel. Definitely not luxury, but clean(ish) and Cozy.

In exploring the town (really just one street) we came upon this Catholic church. It's built from a military quonset hut, I believe left over from the building of the Alaska Highway in the '40s.

We went out to find dinner around 6:30, when we discovered that the entire town had shut down for the evening. There was no food to be found. Not even at the gas stations, which were also closed. It was a good thing we'd decided to stay, 'cause we weren't getting out.

We ended up joining the local party with free food and drink. We met some other tourists driving south from Alaska, had a few drinks, and decided not to stick it out until midnight. We celebrated the New Year at the Cozy Corner.

The next morning was the Breakfast Special at the Cozy Corner. A delicious start to the New Year. The clouds had settled into the area over night, so the view wasn't as spectacular as the previous day, but it was still beautiful.

Whitehorse WiFi

2010-01-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

This post is a bit of a public service announcement.

I've just spent my Christmas holiday in Whitehorse. I've had a terrific time visiting Colleen, who is living up here. I've had the chance to go dogsledding, visit Kluane, drop in on some galleries, and just hang out in Whitehorse.

I've also done a lot of reading and spent some time online. Unfortunately, getting online in Whitehorse can be pretty challenging. You may be able to get access through your hotel. The Westmark and the Edgewater both offer it. But if you're not staying there you're SOL.

If you're used to going to Starbucks to get access, you'll be out of luck. Neither of the two in town have WiFi access, which is kind of funny, since that's one of the perks you're supposed to get by having a registered Starbucks card.

Baked, the nice cafe on Main Street, used to have spotty access but doesn't seem to anymore. Fortunately, you can get online there through an unsecured connection from a nearby architect's office. It is by far the best option in town if it's working, but I wouldn't rely on it.

And we made a great discovery yesterday, when all the other restaurants were closed for New Year's Day. Boston Pizza has WiFi. Sure, it's not the nicest environment, but you can hang out, watch a game, and get the most dependable Internet connection in town.

I've done a Google search to see if Whitehorse WiFi got any other results, but I didn't find anything. So I hope this gets picked up to aid future travellers.

btw - Starbucks - Get your act together.

The Universe

2009-12-30T17:49:00.001-08:00

I watched this today and was pretty blown away. I know I'm a speck in the universe, but this is an amazing way to show it.

A very cool gift from the American Museum of Natural History.

Implied Quality at Starbucks

2009-11-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've seen this poster dozens of times at Starbucks:I had read it, never really considered its message, and just assumed that it meant that Starbucks sold some of the best coffee beans in the world. The implications is either that Starbucks sells the top 3% of coffee beans in the world or that Starbucks selects from the top 3% of coffee beans in the world.

This morning I thought about it a bit more. It says that Starbucks coffee is made from 3% of the best coffee beans in the world. Not THE 3% best coffee beans but 3% OF THE best coffee beans. There's a huge difference. If you took the worlds coffee and split it into 50% bad beans and 50% good beans, then Starbucks would only have to pick 3% of that latter group to live up to this message. Their coffee could be incredibly mediocre, and yet this poster would still be true.

I actually think that Starbucks does pick better than mediocre coffee. And I'm sure no one else actually considers posters like this the way people like me do. But I do feel like they're being a little sneaky in this, and that it's things like this that give advertisers a bad name. It shouldn't be hard for Starbucks to get across a quality message, they shouldn't have to rely on little tricks like this.

Or, maybe Starbucks did mean what I had originally thought, and now I'm overthinking all this.

Brilliant Schweppes Spot

2009-11-20T16:52:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I should be ashamed of only now seeing this spot, because it was in the Gunn Report's list of most award winning spots in the world last year. But this is just gorgeous. It's rare to see something with such beauty fit so perfectly with a brand promise.

Yukon trip - Part II

2009-11-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

My sister gave me a hard time the other day for starting to write about my Yukon canoe trip and then not carrying it on. It's been 3 months now, but I'll see if I can tell the story.

On the morning of our second day we woke up to a breakfast of cinnamon bun leftovers. We finally finished off the gigantic bun we'd bought the day before, and were thankful to not need to eat it anymore. We'd had enough.

Right outside our tent were footprints that explained some of the noise from the night before. I think they're moose hoof prints, but when it's dark outside and you're in Grizzly country every sound has added meaning. Particularly when you're a city dweller like me.

We got out on the water for our day's paddle. It was a little overcast / smoky still, and not particularly warm, but it was a decent enough day to be out on the water. After a couple of hours of paddling we came to a point where our map said that there was a small settlement off to our left. We were able to beach our canoe and head up a little hill to check it out. It was a small homestead that someone had built for themselves many decades ago.

There were several of these during the trip. Little homes and communities that people had built, usually back when the Yukon river was the primary means of transportation between Whitehorse and Dawson City. It was pretty interesting to think of this big river where we were all alone being populated and acting as a vibrant transportation route 100 years ago, when now there is almost nothing along its length.

We returned to our canoe and continued our paddle. A great deal of the shore on this day had been destroyed by fire within the past decade or so, but it was still quite beautiful. There were a couple of signs of development along the way as well. We paddled from time to time near a highway. We passed a mining operation with a big ferry that crosses the river.

Then, in the early afternoon, the highway left us and there were no more signs of life anywhere. We were truly on our own. I put out the fishing rod to see if I could get us some dinner. I had no luck then or at any point for the rest of the trip. I'd bought the rod, all the tackle, and the licence, hoping to grill up a fresh fish at some point. But I'm not much of a fisherman, so it was a good thing that we didn't have to rely upon my skills for food.

By now it had really clouded over. It was looking like it was going to rain pretty soon. My goal for the day had been to make it to Fort Selkirk, an old trading post where I had heard that there was fresh water and a fenced off camp ground. We knew we were close when it started to rain a bit.

Fort Selkirk is right after the confluence of the Yukon and Pelly Rivers. I was pretty excited when I spotted the Pelly because it meant that we were close. We knew we needed to make a certain turn in the river at that point to get the shortcut to Fort Selkirk, but the current decided that that wasn't going to happen. It grabbed us and forced us across the river. This wouldn't have been so bad, except there are sand bars all across the river at this point, which we were doing our best to avoid. You can dodge the ones that are out of the water, because the river flows around them, but the ones that are just a bit under water are much more difficult, because they can cover the width of the river, they're hard to see, and the flow of the river can take you right on top of them. We hit several, got stuck a few times, but were able to continue without ever getting out of the boat. (I know, it doesn't look too bad. But that's what makes it hard.)

Needless to say, it took as a long time to get back on track and make the final leg into Fort Selkirk. By this time the rain had turned into a downpour. We were getting drenched. We paddled hard and I dreaded setting up camp in the weather. We had proper gear, but it was going to be a very unpleasant night.

Fort Selkirk is build on a plateau above the river. We could easily spot it from 10 minutes away. We beached our canoe and I climbed the stairs that had been left for travellers like us.

I'd been told before we left that we could camp in a fenced off area near the flag poles, so I went in search of our site. The whole area around the poles had been turned into a muddy bog by the rain, so I went searching in the opposite direction, which looked more promising.

At that point I saw a woman coming towards me from the opposite direction in the rain. She welcomed us, said her name was Wendy, and that she was from the first nations group who looks after Fort Selkirk. She let us know that we were welcome to camp in another area, nowhere near the flagpoles, but that with the rain and since we were the only visitors there we could take over the warming hut if we liked and stay in there for the night. This sounded like a terrific improvement over staying in the cold downpour. The she quickly showed us around - the hut had a giant stove, there were external storage lockers for food, there was a pile of dry wood that they had cut for visitors, there were water pumps and there were outhouses. I couldn't have been happier if we'd come across a Four Seasons in the woods. Compared to the night I thought we were about to have this was luxury.

We rescued our gear from the boat. Secured our canoe. And got everything into the hut.

The hut was fantastic. We built a roaring fire. (It took a few attempts to get it to the roaring stage. Many thanks to Colleen.) We set up our gear in hopes that it would dry that night. I cooked us a bit of dinner. That night it was pad thai and biscuits. Delicious! And we got set up for the night. Here's Pig making another appearance.

It turned out to be a terrific end to a very nice day, and the best possible alternative to what was going to be a pretty miserable night. A huge thanks to the Fort Selkirk First Nations people, it was greatly appreciated.

Perhaps not your dream vacation

2009-10-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

So, my mother and step-dad are taking a two week holiday to Israel.

Yesterday my sister forwarded me their itinerary. The second item on page one read as follows:

"Drive to Sderot. This is city has been an ongoing target of Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip located less than a mile from the city. Sderot has borne the brunt of Palestinian rocket attacks since 2001, killing 13 people, wounding dozens, causing millions of dollars in damage and disrupting daily life and ruining the economy. More than 1,000 projectiles have exploded in the town of about 20,000 people in the past year alone."

Well, of course, who wouldn't want to go to Sderot. I've dreamed of going to Sderot. And after that I might go spend some time on the Somali coast and then maybe cross the border between China and North Korea.

Mom, David - You're pushing 70. Shouldn't you be on a cruise in the Caribean?

Sweet 16

2009-10-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

I was just sitting in bed browsing some interesting blogs and watching a video or two when it struck me that the functional internet, and by that I mean the Web, is only 16 years old. It was '93 when Mosaic, the first really usable web browser was released.

I remember the first time I saw the web. Before that I'd been online using tools like Archie and Gopher. Then I was visiting a friend of mine for the weekend while he was studying at Western. He introduced me to the web, and I was simply blown away. Who knew what a major part of my life it would become.

One of my first jobs at an agency was helping Palmer Jarvis figure out what this new web thing was back in '95. I had to give an opinion as to whether there was any business to be had there, and what sort of business model the agency should set up to take advantage of it. In hindsight, the reco I prepared for them was actually pretty spot on.

16 is remarkably young. The consumer internet is really just a pup. I can't wait to see what the next 16 years brings.

Rory Sutherland at TED

2009-10-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

I enjoy reading Rory Sutherland's blog.

I'm a big fan of TED and wish I could afford to attend.

And I thought Diamond Shreddies was brilliant.

So here are several things I like, all together.

Thanks to AdHack for pointing this out.

Info factoids

2009-09-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

I enjoy informational videos like this. I'm not sure if I retain much of the info, but it's always a good reminder of how fast things change. On the other hand, statistics can be misleading...

And no, I didn't know what "Rickrolling" was. Did you?

Hypocrisy at the Community Centre

2009-09-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

I was down at the False Creek Community Centre the other day and walked past their vending machine. A little chart on the inside left of the machine with colour coding caught my attention. Headed "Healthy Choices" it had four levels ranging from the double check marked green "Choose Most" to the red unhappy face "Not recommended".

And beside each item in the machine was a corresponding colour sticker. So, for example, trail mix got the nice double check mark, whereas one of my favourites, Coffee Crisp, got the dreaded Red Sad Face.

Now, in some ways I don't mind this. It's not a bad thing to remind us that some foods aren't very good for us.

But don't you think it's a little hypocritical to sell a product and, at the same time, say it's "Not Recommended". How about this, if you don't recommend it then don't sell it. Don't sell it to me and try to lecture me at the same time. Stand up for what you believe in.

I could honestly accept if they said that one was a "Healthier Choice" and one was "Less Healthy". But instead it's "Choose Most", "Choose Sometimes", "Choose Least" and "Not Recommended".

Shouldn't a Rec Centre be a leader in healthy eating. If anyone should be expected to set an example and not sell crap, it should be the place you go to to get healthy. I guess in this case the potential for revenue from the machine outweighed their principles. And that's kind of sad.

Canoeing the Yukon River

2009-08-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

Colleen and I set off on our trip down the Yukon River two weeks ago. We flew into Whitehorse on the Friday evening, did some last minute shopping at the local Canadian Tire, where we picked up bear spray, fuel, bear bangers, flares and other things that they don't like you to carry on the plane. We then spent the evening with our friends Jeff and Jenn.

The next morning we went grocery shopping and added to our camping food. We also picked up a couple of last minute things like a toque for me and a safety knife for paddling. Then we went down to Kanoe People, where we picked up our boat. They had answered all my trip questions for the past couple of weeks, they had set up transport to Carmacks, where we w

ere to start our trip, and they were helpful on that Saturday morning, providing us with new gear, a bear cache, maps and lots of good safety stuff.

Next we got a ride from a gentleman Harris from Whitehorse to Carmacks. On the way we stopped off at the Braeburn Lodge, home of the Yukon's giant cinnamon buns. I was shocked at the price, $8.50 for a bun, but it served as lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning for the two of us. Sorry I didn't get a photo of the bun. They really are huge and really rather delicious.

Harris dropped us off in Carmacks, where we were able to get one last fabulous meal before our trip. Cheeseburgers, onion rings and milkshakes. Yes, we were eating terribly, but we felt we deserved it if we were going to be on the water for six to eight days.

We went down to the dock, loaded up the canoe, strapped it all in with bungies. And we were ready to go. It was after 4:00 by the time we hit the water, much later than I'd hoped for.

The first few hours on the water were pretty uneventful. The forest fires in the area at that time were pretty terrible, so there was a haze covering the water and you couldn't see that much. One canoeist who had arrived at Carmacks when we had been leaving said that he'd seen fire on both sides of the river shortly before getting there. All the same it was a nice start to our trip, regardless of the limited visibility.

Our goal for the first day was to make it to the Five Finger rapids and the Rink rapids. These are the only two rapids to speak of on the trip and, as a pretty novice paddler, I had been stressing about them. I'd watched videos on YouTube and I'd done all the research I could to learn how to tackle these rapids. I'd had sleepless nights worrying about them. All I know was that it was critical to stay river right when we went through them.

After about four hours of paddling and tracking our progress on our map we knew we were getting close. We finally rounded the bend and there they were, five basalt pillars in the middle of the river, just waiting for us. It was now or never, although we had no choice really, since the river was flowing pretty fast at this point. So Colleen and I got our nerve up and charged ahead.

We hit the first gap in the rocks at just the right spot. We paddled for the left hand side of the opening. We bounced around a bit, rode a swell or two, and that was it. No drama, no capsizing. It was fun and somewhat exciting, but for all the stress that they had caused the Five Finger rapids were quite a disappointment. More than anything, they were really pretty.

Next up were the Rink Rapids, about an hour later. Nowhere near as dramatic as the Five Finger rapids, we still didn't want to mess with them. But by staying river right again, we were able to avoid them pretty much altogether. You can see them here, just ahead of us.

Having survived the main challenges of the day, we were beat. It was time to find an island and make camp. We had to paddle some distance still to find just the right, relatively bear free, location. While we paddled the sun was beautiful as it poked through the smoky haze.

It took quite awhile for us to find a location that we liked. We ended up settling for something less perfect than we wanted, but it was getting late and we needed sleep. We set up camp, at some more of our cinnamon bun, and called it a night.

This is our friend Pig, who likes to travel with us.

The night was eventful, with lots of deeply disturbing noises. But we'd survived day one, and we'd made it through the rapids, so things were good.

I'm so depressed.

2009-08-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Stan Lee of Brand DNA for pointing this out.

Last year Queensland Tourism ran the hugely successful Best Job in the World contest. I loved this idea. People around the world entered. It got massive PR coverage. In my opinion it was a huge success, as I'd never even considered travelling to Queensland before, and now it was on my mental map. The agency that did the work, Cummins, won loads of awards, including a gold Lion.

We've spoken about this campaign several times with our Tourism Yukon clients. I'd kill to do a campaign this successful for them.

What happened next? Well, Cumming got fired and replaced with a new agency.

And then the new agency put out this:

What a load of advertising drivel. What crap. Now, the only way anyone's going to pay attention to this campaign is through rants such as this.

Maybe there was a good reason why they fired their agency. Maybe they felt that the ROI on the Worlds Best Job campaign wasn't good enough. Maybe the agency was expensive. Maybe they were difficult and didn't want to do a TV campaign. (That one seems possible.) But there's no way that they should have moved to this.

Versace or D&G

2009-08-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

I'm curious. Who do you think the designers are who have decided to take on the oft overlooked sweatshirt market?

A reminder for fighters

2009-08-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

They had these antlers on display in the Dawson City visitors information centre.

It's two sets of antlers, intertwined. Apparently two moose decided to butt heads to determine who would get to mate. The bigger moose won and likely killed the smaller moose in battle. However, as a result of the fight the antlers got stuck together, meaning that the winner ended up having the loser moose attached to his head until he starved or was taken down by opportunistic predators.

The moral of the story - Be careful of which fights you get into. Even when you win, you might lose.

Only in the North. (Or the South)

2009-08-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

I saw this sign outside a government office in Dawson City.

I love it. One stop shopping for your liquor, driver's license and shooting license. The only thing that would make this better would be if they also sold ammo and motorbikes.

I suspect that the other places you might find a sign like this would be Texas and Alabama. (Both states that I'd like to visit some time.) Something tells me that the people might be rather similar too. Very friendly but fiercely independent.

Poor kid.

2009-08-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

Colleen and I did a canoe trip down the Yukon River the other day. We started in Carmacks and ended up in Dawson City. It took us 5 days to do the trip. I'll probably do a few blog posts about our little adventure, because it was quite a different experience for me.

After the trip we had a couple of days to spend in Dawson City prior to flying back to Whitehorse, where we spent the weekend. I noticed this sign on a street corner in Dawson.

I love this sign. It's so retro. I wonder what year they phased this sign out. If any kid today wore tight little shorts like that to school he'd get killed by the other kids. Plus, that hair and those tiny little shoes are kind of adorable.

And what is that kid doing with that ball? He's flat out dribbling it like #23 on a breakaway. Run kid, run!

Nailing the coin toss.

2009-08-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have an admittedly very geeky side. I also enjoy a bit of gambling.

Someone pointed me to a cool blog today where they have done a summary of a 31-page document titled "Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss", which shows how coin tosses are not completely random. Have a read here.

This reminds me of a rather successful night a few years ago with the guys from NewAd at Chambar, where I took a lot of money off of people based on coin spinning. If anyone that lost money to me that night is reading this - I promise I was not aware of these facts before today.

A pure rant. - Kia Forte ads

2009-08-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Most of the "bad" advertising out there really isn't that bad. It's pretty innocuous and ineffective, but it actually causes no harm to anyone other than the advertiser, who paid money and will see no results from it.

But there's a special category of bad advertising that is actually so bad, so annoying, so devoid of any positives, that it makes me angry. And the current Kia Forte campaign falls in that court.

I've been complaining about this campaign for months, but I wondered if it was just because I'm a pretentious ad hack. So when my sister started complaining about it the other day I realized that this was one bad ad that transcended boundaries.

Interestingly, I can't find the spot on YouTube or anywhere else, so I can't link to it. But if you've watched Canadian TV over the past 6 months, I'm sure you've seen it. And I expect that you hate it like me.

First of all, what's the point of these spots? The only thing that they accomplish is to get me to associate the word Forte with Kia cars and remember that there is a vehicle called the Kia Forte. So, if their sole objective was to drive awareness, then their job is done. However, if any of my team ever brings me a brief whose communications objective is to drive awareness, they know that they're going back to the drawing board. Awareness is never an objective. It's one part of the equation. What do you want people to be aware of? That's the far more important and challenging issue.

But what do these spots make me aware of? I don't know. Perhaps they make me aware that people who drive the Forte aren't good at anything else. (And I'm not sure if driving the Forte makes them good at anything either, except for buying a crap car.) Or maybe it just reinforces the fact that anyone driving the Forte is a massive dork, since that's what they've made all of the drivers in the spots. And, at this time, I would have to agree that anyone that drives a Forte is a dork, 'cause I wouldn't be caught dead in one after that campaign.

Those are the only two possible messages that I can take away from this campaign. There's nothing about the car, about the kind of person who drives it, or even the kind of experience you might have in driving one. There's nothing else. The entire message is about the name of the car. They couldn't come up with anything other than the name as a feature? Does the freakin' car have an engine? A fifth cup-holder? A bilingual manual? Anything?

Maybe, heaven forbid, this has been a successful campaign for Kia and sales have gone up. I have a hard time imagining that, but it happens from time to time. And there's no doubt that they put some serious support behing the campaign, because I saw the spots dozens of time. So maybe they've sold a few cars, but this has to be bad not just for the Forte, but for the overall Kia brand, which had a nice little niche and I suspect has now killed that niche.

I'm tempted to rant more about the agency that did this. But there are a lot of factors that go into creating something this bad. And the truth is that you can see how something like this would happen. Someone came up with a little idea about the name and thought it was a fun little joke. The agency pushed hard and found a way to sell it in. Someone made a joke at the start of the meeting about "presentations are not my forte" and everyone laughed and the thing took on a life of its own. Maybe the client felt unsure, but the agency talked him into it and assured him that "not my forte" will become part of the vernacular. So the client dropped his million dollar production budget into a few spots, showed it to his bosses who decided to trust him that day, and it just happened.

Good lord. I love this business. But sometimes it just baffles me. Back to it now.

The world in real time

2009-07-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I found pingwire today via William Gibson's blog.

It provides a real time view of the images being posted to Twitter. No editing, just a pure image stream.

It's pretty amazing to watch and see what people are shooting. No context or idea of who the photographers are, just things that people thought were important, interesting or beautiful enough to take a photo of and post.

There seemed to be a lot of shots of breasts. Why am I not surprised? I've never posted a photo of breasts to Twitter, which probably says a lot about my lifestyle. (sigh)

As Mr. Gibson, who I am a huge fan of, says: "Simultaneously profoundly amazing and definitively boring."

This is one of those random things that wouldn't have been conceivable without massive bandwidth.

What's your lion made of?

2009-07-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Our creative director sent this around this afternoon. Hilarious.

It costs a lot to buy your Lion if you win. Is it worth it?

(The physical Lion award, not the win. I'd still give my left arm for a titanium. Wonder what that one's made of?)

LED Wall

2009-07-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

My colleague, Michael, forwarded this to me the other day:

La Vitrine - Montreal from steven bulhoes on Vimeo.

I love it. I'm sure it took a lot of skill to create, but it seems to be very simple. As a user you don't get any info about what's going on until you're interacting with it, at which point you understand how to work with it immediately.

I love an idea like this that can be used at street level for a variety of businesses. Obviously you could create other ways of interacting with the wall that might be more specific to your specific business or product. And you've just added a little fun and wonder to people's day.

I also love the fact that this is from Montreal.

That's one bad billboard

2009-07-13T08:53:00.001-07:00

I spotted this ad while driving to work the other day:

If you can't see it, then let me give a little explanation. The headline says "Many like their cider to be just like them. Au Naturale." And it's got a photo of several older, overweight people hanging out on a dock.

Now, I'm not one to argue that your target needs to be reflected in your ads. I think you can do a perfectly good job of reaching your target by featuring someone that's not your target. It's all about the message that's taken away, not whether they can place themselves in the ad.

All the same, what in the world is Grower's trying to do with this? Are they trying to say that this is the cider for fat middle-aged nudists? I think I get where they're trying to go with this - Relax and be natural. But honestly, this is not an appealing image. It certainly doesn't make me want to go grab a Growers and hang out, and I love a nice cold cider on a hot day.

Middle-aged, naked and chunky - Not good photo for alcohol ad.

Starbucks sociology

2009-07-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should go back to school or get a government grant to study random sociological things that I'm curious about.

Today I'm curious about the cultural impact of milkbars around the world. Now that Starbucks is pretty much global, how does regional culture effect how we cooperate at the milkbar. (BTW - a milkbar is the station where you put in your cream, sugar and whatever else you add to your coffee.)

For instance, not surprisingly, Canadian milkbars seem pretty cooperative. We'll step aside for one another, pass the cream, and be pretty deferential. While American milkbars can be more competitive and a little more aggressive. The occasional elbow gets thrown.

I've also noticed that sometimes you can get into milkbar harmony, and both party's moves can be coordinated and choreographed. I wonder if that's what Brazilian milkbars are like. Akin to how they play soccer.

So, I'd like to get some Canadian government grant to study this. Then I'll travel around the world to document milkbar behaviour. The final study will have great importance for the world and could have a major effect on how people work with one another. Perhaps the bells of peace will ring across the land.

Here's a random milkbar photo from the Starbucks across the street from my office. This shows some nice collaboration:

Tweeting vs. blogging

2009-07-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

I think it would be interesting to study the impact of tweeting on blog postings. I know my postings have tailed off since I started posting to Twitter. I now put out half formed thoughts in a moment, versus putting a bit more thought to it and writing a few more words. Does one replace the other?

This seems intuitive, but I haven't seen any data on it. There seem to be more than enough people out there excited to take shots at blogs and Twitter (particularly Twitter) whenever they can. You'd think one of them would be all over this.

I still haven't bought into Twitter. But I haven't stopped yet, even after a couple of months, so clearly there's something in it for me.

Gutsy move by Starbucks

2009-06-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

I was in my local Starbucks the other day and saw this sign.

Wow! I was totally blown away.

The copy reads: "I long for the day that you completely ignore me. You'll be on your break, enjoying a coffee in your favourite mug or tumbler. And I'll just sit back and smile."

For a company for whom I'd suspect 90% of their sales are made in disposable paper cups to put out a poster saying "stop using paper cups" takes serious guts. I'm no better than the next guy. I get my coffee in a paper cup far too often. And I love the fact that Starbucks told me to stop it. And I don't love Starbucks. It's hard to love a gigantic company like them. But I like them a lot more after seeing this poster.

The problem is that the next time I went into this Starbucks the poster was gone. And I haven't seen any more since in that Starbucks or any other. I hope they didn't chicken out. Because with their volume I could actually see something like this having a very positive impact for them. Hell, imagine if they actually made a big deal out of this. I'll bet they wouldn't hurt sales at all, but their brand likability scores would go through the roof.

If you're reading this Starbucks people, consider it. It's counter-intuitive, but it's so crazy that it just might work.

Wonderful work from Stella

2009-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

I love this ad.

It's a wonderful Stella spot. Great brand feel. And totally unique.

But my favourite thing, by far, is the use of that strange little oil painting in the middle of the spot to show the carnage that took place when the pirates attacked the beer ship. It doesn't fit at all with the rest of the spot, yet it fits right in. It tells a part of the story that is untellable, and does so in a manner that makes you not question the outcome. Totally odd, completely random, and yet it's perfect.

In looking for this ad on YouTube I also found the 60 second version of the spot. Perhaps it's because I've become used to the :30, but I think I like the shorter version more. More shots of the painting and the blood flowing from the fountain don't add to the perfect feel of the spot. I still think it's great, but it's just not as understated as the :30.

Brutal Honesty

2009-06-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

I was heading into my local driving range when I saw this sign.

But I appreciated this sign for two reasons. First, the insight is bang on. Most golfers suck. After playing for 20 years and loving the game, I still suck. And I think that most golfers know they suck. So they go to the range to improve. But all they really do is practice doing the things they already do wrong, so they continue to suck. Lessons are the only way I've ever gotten better, and it's amazing how seldom I take them.

Secondly, they got the insight across in as blunt a form as possible. Some insights need dressing to make them more palatable. Some need features added to make them more noticeable. But for someone going to the range to try to get better, the brutal harsh truth is the way to go. Leave it clean, leave it simple, and maybe I'll get it through my thick head.

The truth, plainly stated. How refreshing.

Who'd have thought that I'd find a lesson in communications at my beat-down local driving range.

Magnum / Star Wars

2009-06-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

OK. Forgive me from stealing from the viral video charts, but I thought that this was just too brilliant.

I knew when I first watched this that it was damned close to the original. But it wasn't until I saw this side-by-side comparison that I understood what a great job they'd done.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

negotiating

2009-06-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how often I find myself in these discussions. And each time I find myself surprised. The requests sound so reasonable, but in the end they're asking us to devalue our time and services. I can't see someone asking a lawyer to write up a contract for free the first time, or to just pay their accountant to do half their taxes, but companies often treat their agency like this.

I guess that's just the business, and it's in our hands as to whether we're going to have the self-respect to just say "no".

Huge kudos to whomever put this together.

Safe Merchandising

2009-05-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

This falls under that category of things that amuse me...

Colleen and I were in Costco the other day. I love wandering the aisles there and just checking out everything they've got. As we walked through the office supplies section they had some safes for sale. 'Cause, you know, you just might need a safe. Here's my favourite:

I can't imagine they're being too successful at selling a safe that's had its door ripped right off. I might be going out on a limb here, but I don't think that "easy door removal" is a key driver of brand choice in the safe category.

On a related note, I was quite impressed by reports that Brian Mulroney kept his $250k payments in a safe at home. What he did for the money may or may not have been illegal, but when you keep $250k in $1000 bills in a safe in your house you sure aren't setting yourself up to look innocent.

McChucks vs. The Bucks

2009-05-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

There was some very interesting research posted by Pew, looking at whether people would rather live in a community with more Starbucks or more McDonald's. McDonald's won the day, which perhaps isn't surprising this year when people are returning to comfort (& cheap) foods and perhaps eschewing their everyday indulgences.

Here's a chart that shows some of the results. You'll have to click on it to be able to read it:

Most of the stats here aren't surprising. McD's does better amongst those with lower incomes, less education and guys. I did think that the age gap was interesting though, with younger respondents being far more Bucks-Positive, while the older folks headed for the arches. Also interesting was that Starbucks performed better amongst Liberals than Conservatives and amongst Hispanics vs. Whites and Blacks.

One other item that isn't included on the above chart that somewhat surprised me is that McD's performs well amongst all sorts of religious groups, but that Starbucks did well amongst the agnostics and athiests. Perhaps not surprising from the above data, but it's an interesting finding.

Brilliant blend of tech and creative

2009-05-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

Check out this case study on an outdoor ad that uses face tracking technology to know when viewers are looking, and then changes that based on whether people are looking or not. It's a cool technology, but it's brilliant when combined with this domestic violence message.

It just won at the One Show. In my mind, deservedly so.

Enviro-Irony

2009-04-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

I went to the auto show a few weeks ago. On the top level they have all of the ancillary displays showing aftermarket parts, cool paint jobs, etc. One of the biggest displays was of fuel efficient vehicles put on by Environment Canada. They were handing out this guide to fuel efficient vehicles:

The problem I have here is that this was a pretty substantial book that I had no need for. I didn't want an fuel efficiency guide, nor do I have any intention of buying a car in the next year, but this was shoved in my hands. I recycled this when I got back to my office, but the idea of how many of these fuel efficiency guides were printed only to be immediately tossed aside after distribution seemed pretty ironic.

School Trademarks

2009-04-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a great number of ESL schools around Vancouver that have appropriated the names of famous institutions. There's Haarvard College, Yale and Columbia English schools. I spotted this ad the other day at my local SkyTrain station.

I'm sure that they do this in cities around the world. I'll bet it's pretty impressive when you return to Korea, China or Japan and tell everyone that studied hospitality at Eton and then did your English language training at Haarvard.

I'm curious what the trademark law is on this one.

A&W Refinement

2009-04-25T03:23:00.000-07:00

I went to A&W this afternoon. Sometimes you just can't escape the need for a Mozza burger and onion rings. Fortunately these days it's a somewhat rare occassion.

Here's my tray:

Check out that frosted mug full of Coke. What a thing of beauty. A&W may not have the best burgers. And they're certainly cheap bastards with those ketchup containers that hold no ketchup. But they more than make up for it with that beautiful frosted glass.

I'm sure there's a cost associated with it. Breakage. Theft. Cleaning. Etc. But I give them full credit for finding some part of a typical fast food meal and making it special. It made my lunch feel a little more civilized.

Plus, it was a little less garbage to be tossed at the end of my meal.

Wicked bike video

2009-04-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

I think we're all a little tired of viral videos showing people doing things that are clearly impossible, but that look real. (Ray Ban started it. Levi's jumped in through the same agency. Nike and Kobe did it. Mini recently made fun of it.) The worst thing about that trend is that it has now made its way into mainstream advertising, such as that annoying car ad that's currently running that show the amazing ways a couple gets all their gear into their car by tossing it out the window. Granted, it's better than 95% of the car advertising out there, but it feels a little weak to grab an expired online trend and spin it into your offline ads.

So instead here's a video of a guy doing stunts on his bike. The big twist this time - it actually is real.

Why are they following me?

2009-04-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

I ran in the SunRun on the weekend. It was somewhat disappointing, since I came down with a brutal cold on Saturday. All the same, I was happy with my time.

Today I got this e-mail:

Hi, hawes (hawes).

Vancouver Sun Run (vancouversunrun) is now
following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Vancouver Sun Run's profile here:
http://twitter.com/vancouversunrun

You may follow Vancouver Sun Run as well
by clicking on the "follow" button.

Best,
Twitter

I realize that this is somewhat standard practice, but don't you think it's a little weird to have an event follow you. People, sure. Companies, maybe. But an event? This might go so far as to be creepy.

I know, I'm taking things too literally. But I don't get it. I want relationships with people, not with fun runs.

And hell, I like the SunRun. I've done it 4 times now and will do it again next year.