Chinese Food: A LINUX recipe.

I can't believe I missed this TED talk which appears to have been on the site since December last year and that Jason over at 88:Bar has picked up on. It's well worth a look and is particularly worthwhile when thinking about the importance of food outside of nutritional value alone. It's hugely important as a cultural and sociological dynamic. Much more than we would normally guess. Nice find Jason.

Maruti Suzuki

Suzuki of Japan have a patnership in India called Maruti Suzuki. I did some consultancy work a few years back running around India for a multinational looking into the auto market and specifically car networks so this ad resonates quite a lot with me as some service centres are little more then an few oxen and some rope to rescue a stranded vehicle through to the usual highly trained professionals that run large dealerships. Pretty good no nonsense guys in my experience when it's a big outfit.

This ad is both powerful and lovely. As good as it gets in advertising, and came to my attention via Bhatnaturally who I think is a must have Indian Advertising blogger you need in your RSS feeds if you're serious about keeping an eye on what's going on in the subcontinent. It's up to a very high international standard in both frequency and quality of content as well as professional viewpoint. I haven't found an equivalent yet in China but will let you know if anyone comes up to speed or indeed you may first. Let me know please.

Asian Poses

I've had a terrific day today as I managed to crowbar myself off fantasy island where I'm staying and make it to Hong Kong central for a full-on slap-up English Breakfast 'power meeting' at the Flying Pan (I went for the 'Fly Up' with extra side of English sausage just creeping into the picture on the bottom right) We had a terrific time because I'm a breakfast connoisseur and when tanked up on English Breakfast tea can wax lyrical with Shakespearean soliquoys or even riff on with an Iambic Pentameter (when pushed )about stuff like plate sizes, Croydon fry ups, Kate Moss and hygiene (it's all true), Audrey in Croydon who keeps it real, her ex partner Rob who is a FASHION HO (but a bit of a genius with it) responsible for educating me both on my degree and more importantly on Vivienne Westwood and the punk ethic among many other things.

I even launched into my recently formed "Hierarchy of Nuts" speech because that's the stuff that fills my head at random points. Do you want to hear it?

No I didn't think so but tough luck, as I made sure that Sherri (who is doing something very interesting with a boutique agency network start-up and her interactive head honcho endured my ramblings) I think I should be sharing it with you too.

It goes like this top of the nut food-chain is the Macadamia and below that is the Brazil, Walnut, Almond or Pistachio (interchangeable) followed by Hazlenut, and then there's a whole sub hierarchy of peanuts starting of with dry roasted and shell steamed (Asia only) and ending up with ready salted and then those awful lighly salted partly husked (is that a word?) cheap peanuts that cheapskate bars serve thinking they're doing us a favour when in fact they only serve to remind one of the poverty of taste being endured but more importantly I felt compelled to share that the Macadamia is the fillet steak of the nut world -  juicy, meaty, tender, and I think we concluded that the likes of the almond are not fully represented if the whole cracking procedure (fiendishly difficult in the almond's case) is not brought into the hierarchy metric. Good point I thought when it first raised.

Anyway, it's important to have an opinion on things as a a planner and the nut allegory only serves to demonstrate that. My planning mentor was alway one for making a game out of these things and would endlessly press gang us with impromptu list-games about books, movies or whatever he deemed worthy of inspection. This was before the ubiquity of mobile phone internet of course but it's a loss we should be aware of.

Lastly, because it was such a grand fry up I insisted on a photo of the glorious spread. I thought briefly, and not for the first time that black pudding is in my case an unavoidable  addictive reason for not giving up meat products (along with bacon, but not sausages) because despite considerable moral and ecological arguments for giving up meat I don't think I can - which fills me with horror . I have the ability to break down and weep or write poetry about black pudding and also chuckle as I did today when Sherri asked what it was made from. Pigs blood innit.

Along the way, I shared the Asian Poses websites for the pic above, and so I opted for the cutting edge vogue, of the puffed cheeks looks coupled with the rapidly fading Churchill V sign. You should try this shit because Asians (particularly girls) are well ahead of the game when pulling camera poses and it can rescue a bad pic or easily replace that awkward scowl that is meant to convey modesty but looks like glumness in many a random occidental snap. Here's the web site again for the afficianado.

I'm Loving It

Holy crap I should really write a PhD thesis on McDonalds because like my Microsoft post they're so big they often get an enormous kicking over everything from the environment to fast culture and I guess there's lots for them to be responsible about, but really while trying to hunt down my most cerebral comment/thought piece - the one about the social function that McDonalds plays in Hong Kong I'm a bit lost. Mainly because it's an excellent brand platform and fits nicely to the commercial I've embedded below. So I'm not far off the mark.

I do remember from an observation I culled the last time I was here in Hong Kong, while frequenting the Causeway Bay restaurants for my beloved McBreakfast, and which I'm not sure if I wrote about on this blog, in the comments or somewhere else but which definitely have been used by me for other global brand categories in a few meeting rooms around the world when trying to contextualize the whole do-good-power or potential of planet sized brand spiel.

Not a subject I talk lightly of either.

But while I try in vain to hunt it down you might want to check out this execution by DDB Hong Kong because it really doesn't get much more contemporary and Asian, than with the Web Cam McDonalds 24/7 Home Delivery Service they're just rolling out here in HK (the commercial that is) and that's one I could write a few thousand words on because between you me and the internet I'm highly familiar with this service and can even reel off some off the finer points of the service in Bangkok such as breakfast kicks off at 5.00 am, the Spinach pies are awesome, and the delivery lads didn't mind doing a few errands for me as I tipped them handsomely and we both chuckled like mad when I gave back a hundred or so sachets of unused tomato ketchup and asked for more coffee creamer (thanks guys that was fun).

I will write a post about my kamikaze tipping in my last few months of Bangkok, because, well, I was in the mood and yet it led to some heated scenes of frenzied artificial popularity that I don't wish to repeat in. But anyway, watch the ad and see what you think. Can you understand it?

I have to say I'm a bit of unusual about the Cantonese accent. It's about as sexy as a Cockney one, which that too can work nicely although is highly subjective, unlike I think a thick Brummie accent which doesn't do as well. Anyway I love those drawn out vowels on Canto chicks.

This movie and specifically this clip might have something to do with it as I first watched Chung King Express in the 90's, and which I've lifted off (nicked) for both my creative briefs and on this blog. I mean check out that blue heart action on Fay Wong which is to die for and frankly there probably is no better director than Wong Kar Wai than in this movie, except for 'In the mood for love'. Possibly one of the most beautifuly directed movies ever (outside of the sensational Korean location based Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring by Kim Ki Duk of Korea)

I'd really like to embed a couple more clips, specificially the Korean movie I just mentioned and a last Fay Wong bopping to the Mamas and the Papas in the food stall but it's just too precious this formatting at the moment, so until another time you can check out more of the McDonalds information over here.

Nixon & Complexity

Prior to George W Bush the most reviled president by pretty much unanimous opinion in recent American history was Richard Nixon. However, after a few years of listening to my early American baby boomer friends or non octogenarian civil rights supporters trash the name of Richard S Nixon I took the time to read into this complex figure who in my eyes is pretty much inseparable from Kissinger as they both dominated the political stage that extended from a year before my birth in 1969 to 1974 when Nixon was ceremoniously (sic) squeezed out of the Whitehouse while walking across the Rose Garden lawn towards the helicopters with one final wave to the cameras before a life of relative obscurity.

There's something about seminal helicopter shots in U.S. history such as the last line of South Vietnamese people desperate to bail out of Vietnam before the Viet Cong triumphed with the fall of Saigon. Yeah, helicopters and history is something I'll always associate with the Americans in much the same way that the Chinese will forever be associated with Tanks and squares.

 

 Incidentally this famous photograph of the fall of Saigon was taken by Dutch photojournalist Hugh Van Es who died just under a month ago here in Hong Kong. It is all connected you know even if it's largely some illusory Black Swan post rationalised causality.

Traditionally the view of Nixon is one of mendacity, vulgarity and sneaky subterfuge, and yet, it is one I can reconcile with the other side that I want to talk about because let's face it, the problems don't lie with our politicians, they lie with the electorate and our complete inability to handle the truth or even discuss it in an adult manner. That doesn't mean I'm not surprised by the sheer scale of human fallibility over on the other side of the Atlantic with the MP's expense claims which are surely not that far morally from those who claim income support while having an income from work. Benefit cheats sounds so much more dramatic and I'm surprised the press haven't dreamed up a more sticky label for the "right dishonourable members of the Parliament". I digress.

 Clearly the thorniest role that confronted Nixon was Vietnam and there's no denying that in order to extricate the United States from that holy fuck up of ideological warfare in proxy countries that a lot of nasty, ugly and criminal decisions were taken such as the bombing and warfare that took place across the Ho Chi Minh trail which veered into Laos (the most bombed country in the history of the world) and Cambodia thus compromising the lives of millions of their own inhabitants. I'm on record as being hugely fond of the Laotians and the Khmer because of the inexplicable and retarded snobbery they face from other developing world candidates such as Thailand who exercise the rule of marginal superiority acted out from deeply evident insecurity in the manner of the arriviste nouveaux riche against old money while more than aware that side by side with the Benz and it's logocentric Star, is the sticky steamed rice, the stink bean and the ubiquitous calloused hands from pre-school tilling of the paddy fields of Isaan, more often than not controlled by the plutocratic Siamese Chinese families as indeed they do across South East Asia.

 But back to Vietnam because despite the claims of denial by Kissinger  (Nixon is now gone) there can be little ground for conceding that nobody knew what was going on in the Mekong Delta and it's a crime against humanity that only the land of the free are obliged to defend themselves against. However we all know that 95% Americans don't even know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand because as long as the milk and honey is flowing in the lands where territorial transgressions are the sticky issues there's little need to have an empathy for what is known as 'the other'. When it's always about two sides isn't it?

 Which brings me on to the nature of this post because I'm of the opinion that the duality of binary classification is no longer a simplistic luxury we can afford and it's time if you haven't started to look, for the complexity and infinite shades of grey that exist between the polar states of good and bad, black and white, north and south or up and down.

 Life isn't some post war halcyon consumer years of rosy cheeked goodness and evil empire badness, though of course that latter term was Reagan's contribution to political history, yet we now see Obama introducing the nuance of different types of Islam between Cairo and Jakarta and which it would be wise to pay attention to (if taking a look at Islamic country birth demographics for example).

To bring anything to the advertising planning table is the ability to embrace complexity and distance oneself from the relentlessly overly simplistic reductionist role of account planning which is one part science to two parts art and not the other way round.  Particularly now we know that homo economicus is forever dead. And so with that mental perspective in mind I want to reverse back, full speed and with screeching tires (distant sound of police siren in the background) into Nixon's career because it was his role with the Plumbers and the repeated and subsequently scandalous 'break ins' of the Democrat National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate office complex and now forever preserved in political history and it's meme like propensity to term any scandal with the suffix of 'gate' and which first came to light when on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the locks on several doors in the complex. He took the tape off, and thought nothing of it. An hour later, he discovered that someone had retaped the locks. The scandal revealed the existence of a White House dirty tricks squad but to my mind, the democrats could have played a smarter game with what they left out for the uninvited breaking and entering squad.

More to the point is that the labeling of Nixon as  monolithic-bad doesn't do justice to one of the more contradictory and paradoxically subtle minds of the post-war Whitehouse. Here we have a president as in the above video playing his own Piano Concerto.

Furthermore once we distance ourselves from the morally repugnant Indochina actions and the break ins that subsequently required extensive lying, we have a figure who was easily one of the most intellectually qualified of his era, and a character who was responsible for the detente that was fostered in partnership with the Soviet Union (unthinkable really given the postwar context) and most markedly became the first president to visit Chairman Mao and extend the hand of tentative friendship with the Communist China.

 One only has to think of the McCarthy era to understand the deeply Pavlovian response of the American peoples to anything of a socialist nature despite the recent global socialization of the banking system from the efforts of their last GOP president.

Nixon was also responsible for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "clean air, clean water, open spaces" and so we have a complex figure with both the vulgarity of a Bronx bare-fist fighter and the intellectual subtle fingered sensitivity of  a concert pianist, the diplomacy skills of the long term thinker and player as well as the DNA of a progressive environmentalist. Arguably the only game in town as we observe the decline of the American empire.

So in summary embrace complexity and only settle on reductionist simplicity once the really hard work of weeding out the immortally terrible and the infinitely unworkable.


A lot more difficult than one might think.

(I'll come back and try get the formatting right but it's still a mess in draft blogger)

Hong Kong

Well it's been a while since I was last here, messing about on a Tokyo story that wasn't directed by Ozu (小津 安二郎), but I'm very happy to be back and also frankly checkout of The Conrad Bangkok, where I could have holed up for another week while running up a large tab of Pellegrino popping antics.

I've still got my India trip to do and that's going to happen but in the mean time I'm sort of back in love with Hong Kong because I'm reminded how much more breadth there is here. I've often pointed out that if one were to choose the Sinified capital of Asia it has to be Hong Kong both historically, business-wise and geographically. Tokyo is too hermetically sealed as a culture even though I love all things Nippon. Korea too is probably hipper than the former colony now as they just do their own thing with TV and K-Pop production (check that video out on top - three times and you're hooked on pop) which while inspired from elsewhere is definitely on another level. But yet the Koreans or the Japanese aren't known for their multilateral view on things. Xenophobia some might call it but all Asiaphiles will have noticed that this is one area where full marks aren't scored across the board, although I've always appreciated the Malaysian vibe on that point or maybe I've lucked out meeting the best quality people in Penang.

In any case, while no longer the most achingly hip. I still think Hong Kong deserves the moniker of 'Asia's capital'. It reaches all around for cultural influence and yet its past is undeniable, its present is still formidable and the future could well be more than just a Shanghai satellite. Of course Shanghai is the capital-of-currency in China and is arguably the Leviathan of Asia; definitely an exciting city to live and work in but yet for me it's the more sedate Beijing, the seat of power and home of the tanks that more fully represents the bits of China I like the most. Intellect, power, thoughtful, less greedy than its sister Shanghai and in lots of pockets more sophisticated from it's exposure to the international diplomatic ranks.

Anyway after an awesome flight with Emirates who over delivered on food (God dammit that Tuna lemon grass starter really kicks ass) and service (largely gay yet cheerful and authentic) I checked into Hong Kong immigration, once again during a time where people were sporting white face masks (the last time was during the SARS crisis, it's that deja vu thing all over again).

Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok is yet another awesome Asian airport (built on reclaimed land from the sea) and like Suvarnhabhumi, Incheon, Beijing, Changi and all the rest is yet another reason to appreciate this part of the world while Heathrow whinges on about terminal five (are we there yet?) and the US whinges on about terminal decline. It's the Asian century isn't it?

 One more point that contrasted nicely was when, complete with squeezing luggage, I met up with friends in the Jardine House (the one with the circular windows) in Grappa's Cellar located on the basement and was treated to a full-on live swing band and swing dancers and it occured to me that this semi amateur gang of people who were getting off on their own subculture that nods in respect both musically and in dance form to the 30's and reminded me heavily of Malcolm X's autobiography (completed by Alex Haley) with mad scenes of lindy hopping (and the nutmeg and the hookers and finally the Nation of Islam) and I remembered that despite really really liking my trips into the heart of the slums of Bangkok (where I find out how the country ticks) and the sizzling neon lightlife so close by that there's so much more culture happening in places like Hong Kong and which possibly explains the myopic and insatiable nosiness of the Siamese who largely don't even discuss the big two of health and education because a nation of car park whistle blowers and maids is exactly how the priviliged wish to keep it. Priviliged.

I've deliberately left out Singapore in this post because Singapore is unique for me from an Asian perspective and I don't want to spoil it with what should ideally be written within the Island State. And I will.

But lastly as I made my way up the hill after the ferry ride, with a heavy and loaded suitcase in the dripping humidity of the Island I'm staying on; stripped to the waste and ranting in the gloomy night about hiring a car for the final leg of my journey ("there are no cars on the Island Charles") I finally made it up the flights of stairs with the artifice and efficacy of anger to pull that bitch of a suitcase up the steps one by one and yet when I was finally shown to my room I looked up and saw the light and smiled because it doesn't matter where I am it's only a matter a time and then one by one I'll knock you out.

,

#canneslions

Well I had no idea that Microsoft had sponsored the Cannes advertising festival for the last eight years but despite that had joined up with the Facebook group this year in case it proved a useful resource. They've got a hashtag on twitter for the event so adding #canneslions will update there site over here.

Furthermore after my seminal Microsoft Live post (or was that semenal?) they've leveraged their own resource and got a profile page for additional networking and social media utility although they so need to get some bad boy action into that site to add some zing.

Frankly after this post I feel that their endline "You dream it, we deliver it" resonates a bit closer to home. Don't marketing people get the whole 'we're-taking-the-piss' endline yet? ;)