I LOVE ME
If you don’t want to read this little bit of self praise, move on to my post ‘GOD’S LIVING ROOM’ because that is a cracker. (Oh, sorry, that is more self praise. But so true).
A few weeks ago, I received a totally unintended innocent compliment, an observation that puts all frustration and often pent up anger to bed for a moment. A very discerning colleague who had no ulterior motive or even anything to do with production, audio, direction; not physically responsible within the creative arts per say, completely out of the blue suddenly said; ‘You can tell that you did the Designer Shaik telephone system Geg’. ‘You can? I asked in complete surprise. ‘I’d forgotten about that system, but anyway, how’?
It was not quite the answer I expected; Read more
LIGHT YEARS OF SURPRISES – BUENOS AIRES
QATAR AIRWAYS TO BUENOS AIRES (September 2010)
*Revisited July 2014*
When some Mid U.S. based Facebook friends put out a plea for ‘an unusual, something different – more exciting, honeymoon’ idea, they probably received about 400 suggestions, 401 including mine then. I suggested ‘Kabul’, but few take me seriously anyway. Surprisingly, nobody came up with any place in South America either, not even Brazil’s Rio and the Copacabana. To be honest, I never even thought about it. As for Kabul, well it might shock rather than surprise you to learn that Afghanistan apparently has an active tourist board and according to recent BBC World Service documentaries I have been hearing, a woman whose name I did not catch has been revisiting her ‘beautiful city’, waxing lyrical that Kabul rocks. No bias there then? Afghanistan apart, one only needs to keep a bit of an adventurer’s open mind to assume there are still some very pleasant ‘surprises’ on the horizon where you don’t need a Humvy and a flack jacket. Looking from the Arabian Gulf this horizon can be a very long way away indeed especially if one thinks of South of the Equator and Argentina as a destination – where your bath water is supposed to run out clockwise. (Ask a pilot). Argentina! Someone shouts and your mind probably goes blank for a minute, until you picture the football colours and Maradona. Then you think about Eva Peron, the Catholic religion and continue to rack your brains until you come up with corned beef. All those things are true, but you are in for one of the above-mentioned huge surprises if you have never been to Buenos Aires and decide to risk it. Of course, from a British perspective, if you say you are going to Argentina, the first thing your friends will say is; ‘Don’t mention the Malvinas’. Your next thought might be; ‘How the hell am I going to get there from here’? Read more