ThoughtSpurs

I have found the perfect place to read in peace. The swimming pool. When my H20 Audio headset arrives I'll be able to listen to audio books, right now it will be short stories, but as my aerobic capacity increases I'll work towards The Brothers Karamazov or War & Peace , I suppose music is an option too. What would the best music for laps be? As part of my new exercise regime I am spending my allowance on all sorts of paraphernalia to make the experience more palatable. Anti chafe shorts, lightweight running shoes - resisting the urge to become obsessive compulsive as I was back in the 80's when I got hooked into triathlons. It was in the very early days of the sport. I worked for an ad agency called MacKay King (famous for Terry King's cunning reverse takeover of Saatchi & Saatchi). The General Manager was Tony Thomas (now the business manager of the New Zealand America's Cup Team). Tony was also in charge of the Schweppes account and they were sponsoring t...

I spent the weekend in Martinborough, the charming little village, 45 minutes north of Wellington, famous for its vineyards and Food and Wine Festival. Not much was going on. I guess it is the middle of winter so I didn't have very high expectations. We were lucky to be able to enjoy dinner Saturday night at Wendy Campbell's French Bistro, which had just won the Cuisine Magazine regional restaurant of the year award. It is a nice little bistro, I guess it seats 30 people at a time. The award obviously caused a bubble of interest - or perhaps Saturday night is always full. I didn't really enjoy the meal itself - maybe grey old French traditional cuisine can't cut it when you have been exposed to fresh, well prepared contemporary food - available in any cafe or bistro in Auckland or Wellington. The owners are parents of John Campbell (of TV3's Campbell Live current affairs programme) and it was nice to meet his dad, amiably making guests feel at home. In spite if my c...

What are the odds? One of my colleagues from BrandWorld has been absent since last Friday. Well, thanks to the wonders of everyday, all the time TV he's been spotted - in Beijing, ringside, congratulating Nick Willis on his Bronze medal in the 1500 metre final (New Zealand's first track Gold since the hay-days of John Walker, Dick Quax and Rod Dixon). I'm kidding of course, we all knew Mike O'Sullivan was heading for Beijing (I think he was modestly keeping it quiet - its the kiwi way). I hope he has his Free Tibet banner with him

One of the most interesting people I have met in my career so far is Mike Hutcheson. When I was a young copywriter I worked for his advertising agency, Hutcheson Knowles Marinkovich. They were strange birds. It was the first open-plan office I had worked in. The building has a curious opulence, a converted early 20th Century space that is now the recording studio owned by the Finn Brother from Crowded House whose name escapes me presently. In contrast to the baroque surroundings were the accommodations for staff. Everybody had a trestle desk with an unfinished door as its surface - even the principals who sat among us. Hutch was the managing director. Of the three partners he was the 'people person'. Everyone loved Mike (as I am sure they still do). The democracy was all embracing - there were 'Good News Bad News' meetings. Hutch would analogize about the mountains and the balloon - the balloon being the agency and the mountains the challenges we faced - sort of...

I know this is already old-hat but I though you might be interested in it (from the New York Times : All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened? Existential in Exeter Dear Existential, It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental. You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste. You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation...

Over on Tom Peters' blog he poses an interesting question under the heading: Hiring criteria. Are there enough people on your payroll who "lack common sense"? It's an interesting twist. Common sense would seem to be a desirable trait, isn't it? The antithesis of stupidity. Or is it? There are other expressions that have an insidiously stultifying effect, for example: Curiosity killed the cat. That's a doozy. In fact curiosity dragged mankind out of the quagmire of the dark ages. Society is ambivalent about breaking ranks but it is essential for anything new to happen. Somebody has to be dissatisfied with how things are now and apply their curiosity and inquiry to the problem. That said, I found it remarkable how many of my design students at Massey University utterly rejected my assertion that their mission in life should be constantly question how and why things were done, how things would be different if they tried to do things wrong, counter-intuitively an...

I got a pink ukulele for Zoë on the weekend from Bungalow Bill's Music Shop. She loves it. Seems to have a knack for quickly figuring out chords - well the fingering bit. The Ramones thrash classic is featured in the New Zealand Ukulele Companion (published by AUT Media - get a copy). I wasn't sure how it should be interpreted - the Hawaiian strum just kept coming to mind. But this video cleared things up for me.