Crazy days

Been a hectic couple o’ weeks in matt-land, so apologies for the lack of regular bloggage. Fell ill the other week with a nasty throat thang which coincided nicely with friends being in town and stopping me fully enjoying the bravery in concer (they were splendid in their hometown venue of NorthSix). Plus while I’ve been recovering from that all has been madness getting ready for our first big text campaign since New Year’s Eve. For the next four weeks we’ll be running a promotion for Jerry Springer, Blind Date and Maury Povitch.. all very exciting, and certainly felt a slight thrill seeing Jerry talk about the promotion in the spot.

So now I’m off to get a couple o’ hours of well deserved sleep before the excitement begins.. first Jerry is at 7am EST. Go Jerry! Go Jerry! Go Jerry!

Purty

The first snow storm of the season has hit and boy is it a doozy! Whatever a doozy is.

The snow started here about midday as I wandered down to yoga, and by the time I got out about two hours later there was 1/3 foot across the ground. What’s kind of surprising is that even though it’s daytime the snow was settling on the roads and not doing the usual grey, mucky New York road snow thing. Guess that’s because it has been so arsingly cold here that the snow can settle properly (it’s been pushing -20 C, that nice kind of cold where you can’t feel your toes and your face feels like it’s falling off).

Now there’s almost a foot on the ground and a strong wind creating some fun little drifts. Still white and pretty though, well, fluorescent yellowy white from the city lights. I’m hoping that by tomorrow it will have gotten to a better consistency for making snow folk, as it’s not particularly sticky at the moment. Fingers crossed!

We hold these truths to be self-evident

Today is probably the best public holiday in America – Martin Luther King day. It’s a day to remember the injustices of the past and re-affirm that they shouldn’t happen again, to anyone, of any race or beliefs. Especially at the moment it seems like this should be the most important day of the American calendar this year.

Anyways, thanks to Talli for sending out a link to King’s letter from Birmingham jail and here it is.

Hold Music DJ*

It’s a funny old thing being a Brit in New York sometimes – if just for the way in which you tend to get the same reaction from different groups of people about your accent.

Whenever you call up to a U.S. service center, most of which are hosted in the mid-west, you are invariably asked if you’re Australian. On replying that you are British you will then spend the next five minutes either hearing about the call center person’s last 5 day trip to London, or how they so want to go there. With the increasing number of call centers being hosted in India this conversation is however becoming an endangered species.

What’s more interesting is when you talk with another ex-pat. At first you’ll recognise the traditional mid-Atlantic accent. Traditional Anglicisms sprinkled with ‘like’ and ‘whatever’, normally set into a base of BBC World style pronunciation. As soon as the conversationalist recognises a fellow Brit the accent swings into full localized English – as with last night and one of the SVA professors who was from Huddersfield. One moment it was all “jolly good” and “smashing” the next it was “by ‘eck you don’t want to be talkin’ like this t’locals”. It is at this point I become rapidly aware that I’m a southerner (or ‘southern wanker’ in more traditional northern English speak).

The next step in the ex-pat conversational exchange is, of course, football – that’s “soccer” to any Americans reading. What team you support, how they’re doing in the league (or not) and recent transfers come flooding out un-solicited. As someone who enjoys playing football but isn’t fanatical about supporting a team this can all get quite tricky quite quickly. Politely navigating an exchange without riling up inter-team rivalries is practically impossible, especially when you’re not even sure whether the teams are in the same league.

Having said all that it’s great to hear a proper Brit accent every now and again. This is most apparent whenever I call back to some phone service in the UK. My favorite is First Direct, who have call centers in both Leeds and Scotland so you get a great range of Northern accents. Invariably on a quick call to find out my account balance I end up in a long conversation about the weather, how their new year’s eve (or other recent special day) went and where the best places are to shop in New York. Nice one guv’nor.

* The ‘Hold Music DJ’ is an original concept owned and conceived by Nicole Barth(TM), all rights reserved and then some.

Gingerly

Apparently I wasn’t drunk enough on New Year’s Eve this year… even though I tried to drink enough to compensate for not drinking at all last year since I was driving to take Holly to the Falls Festival for her performance. We managed to both fall asleep in the car that night, missing Aussie New Year – so I had to make sure this year I was doubly awake {;)

Why was I not drunk enough? Well I reckon because not only did I wake up feeling relatively good at midday yesterday, but when ‘evil’ Sophy texted over to suggest meeting her and Miguel at Milk & Honey for a few drinks I hummed and hawed and texted back ‘yes’. I’m sure I did write some new year’s resolutions down somewhere…

Anyway I’m glad she did as Milk & Honey is a great little place. An intimate little speakeasy where you have to be on the guestlist to get in but there’s no velvet rope policy – just a ‘keep it chilled and mellow’ policy inside. The drinks, although expensive, are wonderful – the haute cuisine to most bars fast food – which covers the time it takes to make them as well as the amazing flavours. Served with fresh juices in long glasses with long shards of ice instead of cubes, they are stimulating to both the palette and the eye. The bourbon and ginger drink, made with real ginger juice not ginger all, was a complete blast through my slightly fuzzy system – wonderful.

Aside from finding an interesting little bar it was great to see Sophy and Miguel again – hard to believe it had been almost six months. Miguel was mildy excited about the upcoming War of the Worlds, as he managed to score himself a speaking line to Mr Cruise himself. Good job! Strangely they did casting calls for people who could speak Portuguese, but then his line is in English – go figure. What this led to was finding out that Miguel’s 2nd or 3rd cousin is an actor who was in Robocop amongst other films – his name, also Miguel Ferrer. Oh, the other other aside is that through other slightly convoluted familiar paths the Miguels are also related to George Clooney. Small world.

2005 here we go…

The hangover has abated, the new year’s resolutions have been written and broken already, guess it must be 2005 already.

What happened to 2004? I’m sure it only started yesterday, fast asleep in a car at the Falls Festival with my friend Holly who was supposed to wake me up to see in the New Year. Oops. From there it was another week in Melbourne, packing up and saying goodbye to that wonderful little town where I’d lived for four months.

Then onto Thailand, for a great couple of months of beaches, massages and temples – with a brief jaunt into Cambodia in the middle. It was only March when I left from the Andaman coast town of Khao Lak after a four day dive trip to the Similians – now I read the news every few hours hoping that the tsunami news will start getting better. Strange bookends to the year.

Then back to England, for my nephew’s first ever birthday! He’d grown so much in the year since I’d last seen him – a beautiful, sparkling child who, luckily for his camera obsessed uncle, had developed a complete range of clothing catalog poses (including the tricky ‘toy tractor lean’).

England was a bit of a culture shock – and not just for re-adjusting to English prices after a year in Australia and Thailand. The family home of 25 odd years had been sold while I was away, with everyone moving from Camberley up to Norwich. Oi vey. Nice to see a different part of the country, but it is the arse end of nowhere however funny Alan Partridge is.

My plan for coming back was simple – I would get a well paid IT contract somewhere on the south coast for six months, buy a house and do it up during that time, then rent it out and head off to South America to be a dive master, via Thailand as the training there is so cheap. Somehow I found it hard to get back into that plan, so instead of getting a job I went over to Sweden for another holiday. Obvious really. On my return I reasoned I would have my wanderlust out of my system… Then Stephen called from New York, to ask if I’d come help him out for a couple of weeks with this startup he was doing called ‘Text.com‘. Nine months later I’m still back in New York working for the renamed ‘Fountain Mobile‘ and we’ve just done our first proper campaign – yay!

Being back in New York again has been fun. I was never sure I’d come back, with 9/11, being laid off and other events conspiring to make my last few months here something less than enjoyable. I’m glad I’m back though – New York is a great place to be and full of interesting people and situations, chock full of visual & visceral stimuli.

So here’s to a wonderful 2005 for everyone. Cheers!

The Spirit of Giving

As I sit here with tears in my eyes at the continually rising death toll in Asia everything seems so unreal. The sheer enormity of this disaster is incomprehendable. Having lived through New York over 9/11 the emotions are familiar – the shock, the wrenching at the soul, the heaviness in the heart.

The wonderful aspect of this has been the outpouring of support from around the world. Everyone is digging deep to give generously – even if their governments aren’t always so giving. The American government is currently promising $35m in aid, whereas for the Florida Hurricanes over $3 billion was allocated. Guess it’s a shame Jeb Bush isn’t governor of Thailand. Thankfully the American people know the true meaning of giving, with people and organizations allocating huge amounts to disaster relief. A beautiful thing to see.

Francis ford coppola : a film-maker’s life – michael schumacher. I picked this book up off a cheapy stall in Shoreditch market, having enjoyed Easy Riders, Raging Bulls as well as Apocalypse Now. It’s a great read, which took a little bit of time to get into, but once you’re past Coppola’s early life is fascinating and engaging. Coppola is a true visionary, not just in the film arena but also in how he conducts his business. I actually think I learnt more about start-ups and investment from this book than about how to make films. The main lesson, never give up on what you believe in even if all seems lost. Inspiring stuff.

Post by Matt Hobbs

Unbelievable

It’s been a day now and I still can’t believe the devastation that has happened in Asia. The death toll keeps rising – it now stands at an estimated 24,000 people, whereas only a few hours ago it was 12,000. The sheer density of population in that region, and the lack of tracking & organisation would seem to indicate that the number will increase again.

My thoughts are with everyone out there – all the wonderful people I met when I was in Thailand earlier this year, and the countless others in the region. I really don’t know what else to say. I know how glad I was when I heard my friend John’s fiance Sinnead was OK in the Maldives, so I just hope that there are more stories like that.

Dah dum

In the wake of the recent great white attack off Adelaide the state premier has called for the animals death, even though great whites are a protected species. Nothing like a good old bit of knee jerk reaction, especially since every Aussie I ever met who surfed, scuba dived or whatever was always very sanguine about the sharks they swam with. Someone did post a great idea though, that they should tag the great whites so they can be tracked and then issue alerts to swimmers in risk areas.

Meanwhile the danger continues closer to home back on 54th street… For the second time this month the street was closed off as fire trucks evacuated a building. Again not our building, but kinda worrying. One of the hazards of being near a busy area I guess.

In more happy news.. had a great company holiday dinner last night down at Giorgione. Lovely food, erratic heating and slightly over-pretentious. Once everyone around us got more drunken the atmosphere became more fun though. Merry Textmas!

BTW, finally succumbed to buying a digital SLR. My new Canon d20 arrived the other day and I’ve already blown off 300 odd pics on it. Very cute indeed, just have to get the hang of using it and taking the kind of photos I like taking! I just love the fact that it fires off a shot within miliseconds and starts up just as quickly, very different from my dearly beloved but old and battered S30.