Vietnam Advertising Association Surfaces: WTF? A party at the zoo!

Just in: In the wake of The BIG SHOW, I received this news notice yesterday from the Saigon Times regarding yet another show, sponsored by the Vietnam Advertising Association and coming up this weekend, at the Ho Chi Minh City Zoo. WTF? Look, I don't come up with this stuff, I just report it.

By Huu Thang - The Saigon Times Daily

HCMC – Vietnam Advertising Festival 2008, organized by the Vietnam Advertising Association (VAA) and Sunflower Media Co. Ltd., will take place for the first time next Friday and Saturday at the HCMC Zoo and Botanical Garden.

The festival will display over 100 ads selected from Cannes Lions 2008 and Yellow Bell 2008 and ads winning the Vietnam Young Lions award, said the organizing committee.

With all due respect to the writer and staff at the Times, who undoubtedly wrote this from a press release, this story is just a minefield of misinformation, disinformation and just plain incomplete information. What time is the show? Who should I contact for more information? Where is the website I can visit? And what do all those confusing show titles mean? My notice came from a Google Alert and I have seen nothing at all from the Vietnam News, or any of the other major Vietnamese newspapers on the event. At least, The Vietnam Advertising Association should get together with the Vietnamese Public Relations Association and structure a proper release and release schedule. Announcing it one week before in a relatively obscure, English, city-only, newspaper, is curious at best. I will attend the show and file a report afterwards. And who knows, I may be surprised. All I know now, is that the association responsible for promoting the show could look to their moniker and do a whole lot more of "word #2" to get the news out.

In other unofficial reports, VAA rules will follow the same scheme as most other world-renowned Ad shows as follows: Direct Mail categories will be judged and showcased in the Aviary Center, TV in the Lion House, with Account Service awards presented deep inside the Snake House. Elephants have been charged with stamping out unacceptable entries and lizards, small mammals and lemurs will officiate opening and closing ceremonies. The usual assortment of Monkeys, Gorillas and other primates are slated to handle judging.

Sweet Dreams III - Fragmented Fermentations

After a time in any exotic land the things one first found exotic become normal. That rooster on the sidewalk, the steetside barbers, the language - all part of a regular day now. Maybe now, only in dreams can I travel. I am already too far away in the real world. This is a collection of snippets, all from different days and different dreams over a period of six months - each seperated by a letter. (A) Dad is on a street with all old cars - one green Chrysler to be seen. If I look in the rear view mirror of one car, I can see all the others. (B) I travel with the Leo Burnett company to Germany on a Nintendo assignment. They are showing me a 10 year plan to move people into side businesses. There are drinks at a bar with cute girls and my old friend Patrick Scullin (C) Tom Kirkhart, my old college roomate, and his wife Kim are in a house with my old stereo. I can't find the volume and it keeps playing. Tom has 10 boom boxes and other stereo gear around. I can hear his voice as if it is not a dream at all. "Tom, we don't have a lot of room here", I say. I come to believe this dream is real because I can hear the music exactly as it sounds - and that's what wakes me up. (D) The lips are those of a very old lady - aluminum foil wrinkled into her 70s or 80s, yet smiling slightly and pleasantly attractive. I am drawn to them. They are my wife's from years ago, yet now years ahead. Too many years ahead. (E) The composite girl's pantaloons are like three layers of black silk swiss cheese, cut with bigger-than-hand-sized holes and layered so that not two holes match, making my maneuvering, from knee to crotch her minefield affair. But I persist. I persist until the warm milk of the target licks upon my fingers and they are invited in, one by one - cut to a miltary model of a battlefield with model tanks and a radio-controlled red truck as a comander barks, "Higher!". (F) I can hear the song "Courage" as if it is real...

For more Sweet Dreams Click below:

VI: I Woke Up Drunk Today
V: Homecoming
IV: All In A Mouse's Night
III: Fragmented Fermentations
II: Strange Dreams
I: White Huskies: Interpretation please?

The BIG SHOW Vietnam Online Update

Online. At last. Almost. Having begun my last post with a pretty strong critique of Vietnam's BIG SHOW for not being online, I was happy to see on Monday, a notice for The BIG SHOW's website, scheduled to be up in mid December. Now, had anything been mentioned at the actual show, or any promotion done for the website at all beforehand, I would have of course knew about it, and not taken them to task for it in my review - but at least now, the job is 50% complete - the remainder being getting an actual category for online work up in the actual show - to happen next year for sure. So the word is: The BIG SHOW will be up and online, soon. Check it out.

Vietnam's BIG SHOW: Smaller and Digitally Challenged

Welcome to Vietnam's BIG SHOW website. Yup, this is it, or as close as you're going to get to it. Because, as of this writing, they don't have one - and they apparently agree with the Vietnam Advertising Association on at least one thing: "With 23.4% of global advertising budgets spent online, according to ZenithOptimedia, we're just going to ignore that and live in the past without even posting a website of our own or having a digital category in our show". That's about as smart as hosting a horseshoe making competition right down the street from Henry Ford's new factory would have been about 100 years ago, whilst ignoring the iron horses he'd been building in the starting gate. Well, I could be stretching the facts just a little, because the Vietnam Advertising Association decided not to have a show at all this year, so who knows if they would have even acknowledged digital - but they did last year and it's a shame they didn't lick their wounds after a pretty big mess and come back to the ring this year. The lack of competition seems to have neutered the BIG SHOW substantially from last year's Golden Bell face-off and now it's just the SMALL CRAMMED-INTO-AN-ALLEY SHOW.

Note: Since the writing of this post the BIG SHOW has posted a website of all the winners. Check it out - it is quite good.

My comments here will focus on the venue, work, participants and results, which pretty much encapsulates the purpose of any show so let's get started.

The venue:

Continuing with my digital whinge plank, go ahead and put "Cage Bar Vietnam" "Cage Quing Bar Vietnam Ho Chi Minh City" or anything else involving the name and location of this club into Google, Facebook, or even Dia Diem, the Vietnamese map site and see what you get. Unless you're a better surfer than I am (and I doubt that) you get squat, nada, nothing & zip. I certainly couldn't find a website, because I'm sure the Creative Circle Facebook page would have referenced one in their event notice if they did. So, bad on Cage Bar for not even having a website. Isn't there some lounge/trance/world/hip-hop requirement for street-cred that every club have at least a shitty website. Wait, that law was passed globally in 2000. Major fail Cage. I spent an hour trying to figure out where this place was before I left the house. Readers who arrived at this story from the New York Times review of Cage, might want to check out my "Your Man in Saigon" post after reading the next paragraph for a Brian McNally update.

Arriving at 3A Ton Duc Thang is at least an interesting experience, for there is certainly no signage that proclaims anything like a Cage Bar or a Quing Bar on that corner. If fact, even having found the place, there is still no English signage but maybe that's part of the underground image they're going for. Follow the crowd. That's where the hip people are going. Once into the mass of people crowded into an alley aside and behind the place I made my way for the entrance to the club proper. Accosted for my name card by attractive but less than convivial ladies I was given prompt entrance to the interior - jam packed to four walls with people in anticipation of the video screening. Air conditioning was conspicuously absent as the screening began but as true ad-geeks do, the crowd bludgeoned through in search of a picture, an idea, a quick laugh or just a break from the everyday rock-pile that so much ad-work has become. And they were not disappointed. Hot and maybe bleedingly uncomfortable at the mercy of cheap-Charlie club owners who couldn't spare a little air-con, the crowd looked upwards towards the screen.

The work:

The reel begins with a hopelessly dated StarWars typographic theme that should be illegal in 2008 (yes, I know it's a theme choice in iMovie but that doesn't mean we should use it) and segues into a beer campaign that makes the Vietnamese chuckle but the English subtitles don't do much to explain to the rest of us what is funny. Some nuance lost in translation for sure. Quite possibly the funniest spot of the evening for Creamfills chocolates, shows a mum and dad engaged in a Michael Douglas /Jeanne Tripplehorn/Fatal Attraction slam-her-up-against-the-wall make-out scene after just one chocolate, followed by a series of Vinamilk, Nivea, Suziki, Dutch Lady and Sony spots that prove nothing more than the idea that having a big logo or budget doesn't guarantee any sort of genius. The thick air is broken momentarily by a marshal arts cum Bruce/Jet/Lee/Li fight scene revolving around a puddle of mud that becomes a pretty simple and entertaining idea for Tide detergent. A PSA for kids wearing motorbike helmets is well done and well received as well as a Go Green effort by Toyota. But my favorite, and I think world groundbreaking spot of the evening, goes to Absolute Vodka in a series of black on white line illustration animations that follow two unmarked bottles as they travel though a world full of humans. When they stop at the bar for a drink, the items put before them bear a human shape and when the bottles drink them, the animation angle rises and hovers to birds-eye view so that we see the bottles full of teeming human lifeforms. The tagline says something about an "Absolute world" playing on the inverted idea of the bottles maintaining human lives - and I just thought it was damn fucking brilliant. Yes, it sounds, and indeed is obtuse, but it was the brightest damn idea of the whole show and better go on to Cannes and other international shows as a real show pony for Absolute. For their interest in the spot, the Viets didn't really seem to get it in the end, but I credit that to their unfamiliarity with the bottle shape and name of the Absolute brand - however famous it may be in western markets it is a relatively new product here, so a lot of the imagery and branding did not translate immediately here. Kudos to TBWA for that work.

For the print work, most of it would have made good wallpaper for a baby's room. You could fall asleep in seconds with the greater lot of it. My few highlights included an activation campaign for Listerine mouthwash that replaced the actual bottle labels with clever headlines about gossip, kissing and the things one does with their mouth that might be better accomplished with fresh breath and another sort of viral idea for Tropicana Twister that put giant orange slice appliqués on revolving doors to simulate the twisting of real fruit into a refreshing drink. Conversely, another drink campaign made the drinkers mouths morph into the shapes of odd premiums like computers and iPods to accomplish being possibly one of the most unappetizing series of images for a product you drink that I have ever seen. Wrapping up the work, Leo Burnett takes the art direction award for a charming and clever image of an office move that comes out of and lives happily in left field and another agency, who I can only identify by the number of letters in their name (8), wasted two perfectly good display panels with work that wouldn't have made it into an even a half-rate student show. Next year, we should pay agencies $200 not to show stuff like they did.

The participants:

The BIG SHOW is an excellent show, and the only real showcase communications people in Vietnam have to see, discuss, share and debate work during the whole year - but it's in dangerous need of a serious updating and reflection of what the market really is - before it becomes THE BIG FOREIGN AGENCY'S ANALOG ADVERTISING SHOW. The conspicuous lack of Vietnamese agencies at the show was glaring and the lack of any digital component at all was not only professionally embarrassing but irresponsible as well. I don't want to go on record as the first guy who said this, lest Martin Sorrell bar me forever from his consciousness, but with the Olympics over, American elections finalised and a string of ever-going financial bailouts and corporate failures affecting all sorts of budgets worldwide, waiting to see 2009's jump in online spending at the expense of traditional medias will have seemed positively academic by next year's end. Having witnessed the youth, energy and outright multi-cultural optimism of the digital creative communications camp a few weeks ago at BarCampSaigon and comparing that to the rather old-school, foreign-centric effort exhibited in this year's BIG SHOW, two not so epiphanous suggestions come to mind: Get digital - for the future of the business- there's a whole community of people making great digital work. And get Vietnamese - for the involvement of the whole agency community. I really do believe doing both of those things will benefit the entire industry in a way that we're not realising currently.

The result:

As I have seen the past three years in Vietnam, the BIG SHOW always serves the most important function of providing a meet, greet and glower or grouse over what may or may not be the best work in country - but sadly, just once a year. What happens so nicely, annually, doesn't ever seem to replicate itself throughout the year, in a way that could so obviously benefit the young minds that propel the business forward. I'd be happy to work on some quarterly, more youth oriented, information based gatherings (yes, libations included!) that would carry the spirit of the show more regularly into the working lives of those who do the work. This is an area of discussion already open amongst a few of us in the biz so if you have ideas, or want to donate beer, you know where to find me - let me know. Finally two slaps on the wrist tonight: #1: Budweiser - for only providing an hour's worth of free beer - Tiger was much more generous previously. #2: The Cage - for not having the air-con on during the indoor portion and then not doing a thing to convert a more than willing crowd into an after hours crowd who would have happily danced and drunk more had they been provided specials, decent music or any encouragement at all.

Finis:

So that's the BIG SHOW 2008. Not the best show, but the best show we've got. Making it better is up to all of us.

(Of Note: A press release dated one day after this post went up on IntellAsia.net, December 6th, announcing a digital version of The BIG SHOW to be launched in mid-December. Good.)



POSTSCRIPT: As a personal observation I could easily be taken to task for criticizing the show whilst having nothing in it and in some form that's absolutely true - but in another form, not true at all. For those of you who know me and this blog, I write dutifully, three posts a week, and cover the Vietnam advertising scene whenever a story of note comes up,. In 10 months this blog has become one of the most read in country and is also gathering a significant following worldwide. So, in essence I do have a product, it just happens to be a digital product, a social media product, that the BIG SHOW, or any other aspiring communications show in Vietnam needs to account for. But tonight I had one of the nicest things a blog writer could ask for happen. Tonight I met a reader.

I didn't know Phoung at all before this evening. We met whilst I was discussing the sudden drought of Budweiser with her husband-to-be. Upon exchanging the requisite name cards she exclaimed that she new me from Facebook. "Sure", I said. "I'm on Facebook". "But you write the blog", she said. And with that I was immediately taken aback. Who's to know who actually reads a person's blog. For all the accountability and transparency promised by the digital world, it's still rare to find out who those people really are who read the drivel one scribbles every week. And I'm quite the scribbler, I am. So much so that few, worldwide, are really able to keep up with the volume I produce on a weekly basis. Phoung went on to describe minute parts of this work that stretched back as far as 9 months - she said some things were funny - she said the work was graphically well designed - and she went on. Her husband-to-be-jumped in and said, "David, for all the time I have known her, she has never complimented anyone's work as much as she is right now. She's not easily impressed, David. I can assure you she is not giving you a load of crap." Phoung and I continued to speak. She works for a design firm. I was humbled and more than interested in the idea that a second language speaker could have actually made much sense of what I have been writing about for the past 10 months. This work is certainly not easy for people who speak and read English and a real mountain climb for a person dealing through two languages. She explained to me, and her fiancé confirmed, that she sits with a dictionary to get through one of my standard posts. This to me is all pretty damn amazing. And probably the number one reason I continue to engage in this project. One more person read it. One more person got it. And one more person liked it. And that's enough.That should be enough for any writer. Thank you Phoung.

To know more about Brand Marketing Training in Vietnam, go here <.

Blog Redesign Update - Mimosa is The New Black?

Thanks everyone for voting on the new blog colour scheme. Please continue voting through Christmas. At present "yellow" is loosing to choice #3 of "Try again dumbo", so honestly I have no idea what you all like and I'm not much in the business of wanting to please the masses - Oprah and Britney seem to have that market all sewn up. But in a very small nod to understanding my readers and being user friendly, I'm not changing the damn colour scheme, yet, but I am acquiesing to the idea that yellow may just not sound cool - so I'm nicking a page from the 2009 spring fashion scene and adopting the pigment moniker of "Mimosa". The folks at Pantone Inc. colour systems call it Mimosa- 14-0848 TCX. Hell, if nothing else it just sounds pretty (without the numbers) and forward and hip and oh so godamnedtrendsetting if you will. To support this choice of nearly a month ago, loyal reader, Freya, sent me the following MSNBC story on next season's hot colour choice, and you're not going to friggin' believe it - it's Mimosa - or baby crap yellow as it is more commonly known. Not ochre mind you, cause that just sounds old but Mimosa because it sounds fresh, with a hopeful twinge of optimism like the world being renewed or ideas of light finding rebirth. And if that isn't enough psychobabble you can read the companion story on Yahoo Buzz. Yes, that's two digital news services in support of this blog's decision whilst their stories were still being written. So we're trend-setters. All of us together - way ahead of the curve, as usual in the Wild Wild East.

For my own thoughts. Black was dark. Black was Bush. Black was where we were. Black was back. And whatever we do, wherever we go, I would much, much more like that to be forward. There was truly no conscious design choice or logic in the new Mimosa. It just felt better. Besides, "Try again dumbo" doesn't even have a Pantone number.

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
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If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Christmas In Vietnam - Saigon, Invaded Again!

Well, shit. I'm late again. The Vietnamese started putting up the Holiday decorations weeks ago. Never mind that there won't be any snow or that we won't even feel a smidgen's worth of cold. They've broken out the fiberglass reindeer and beat the pants off American retailers at getting this season off to an ice-sicley start. Remember, there's no such thing as Thanksgiving in a tropical climate because harvest season basically lasts all year, so there's no real start point for what will end up being a two month holiday. What happens essentially, is that somewhere in late November the decorations start going up and they'll stay up throughout the Lunar New Year, known as Tet in Vietnam, with minor changes and Santas replaced by Buddhas once Christmas is over. And there's little distinction between the Western New Year and the Lunar one. To the Viets, it's just an excuse to party and drive their kids around in Holiday garb on their motorbikes for months.

To aid in introducing this auspicious event, I've recruited my alter-ego, CitizenMekong, to MC the festivities for you this year. The video below gives you a pretty good capsule synopsis of what goes on around here - and don't complain about the picture or sound quality either. You must understand that CitizenMekong is a capitalist reporter working undercover in a Communist country and so must execute his reports via "spy-cam", an ultra-secret device hidden in an ordinary Motorola cel-phone. Pretty damn amazing, and a tribute to technology if you ask me.





Probably, now, having viewed the video, you'll have noticed that that there was virtually no mention of the birth of Jesus or much of a Christian theme to anything - and that's simply because, in Vietnam, Christmas has nothing to do with any sort of "Christ" or "Christ-child" or any of that secular rubbish. Here, it's been boiled down to strictly the commercial free-for-all the retail community has always wanted it to be - and it fits seamlessly into the coming Lunar New Year celebrations, if only by virtue of costume changes and a distinct slow-down in all sorts of work, government and school practices for the duration of a roughly two month season. By the time the Viets wake up from this Joyeux Noël cum Tet/Lunar hangover, all us bored foreigners will so chirping looney to get back to work that they'll be able to get us on the cheap through the beginning of March!

The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz

In response to reader requests we are now introducing the Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz. The questions shall all be posed by a certified Vietnamese nuclear physicist such as the one pictured here, Dr. Nguyen Kim Long. No expense has been spared in vetting our physicists and I can assure you, I have personally checked their credentials myself. Sweet. So now, on with the quiz. Below, you will find a question in Bold Faced Type. Consider the question, come up with your answer, and then "mouse over" the question to reveal our answer. Should you disagree with it, we'll be more than happy to arrange a mud-wrestling match between your sorry ass and the more than fit Dr. Long to decide the winner. So here goes...good luck!



"Can people get poisoned by indirect exposure to polonium-210?"



For more quizzes, check here:

Iran's Ahmadinedschad - The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz VII
Did Sarah Palin Just Nuke Herself? - The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz VI
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz V
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz IV
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz III
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz II
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz I.

Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX

I was a ping pong ball today. My 11am was put off until three so I decided to jump up another appointment until just after lunch and then shoot back downtown for the 3 o'clock. On the way is one of Saigon's ubiquitous "wet markets" complete with fish sellers, plenty of hanging bags of noodles, garlic, dried peppers, panty-hose, sneakers, soap, handbags and dried squid amidst the aromatic drifts of coffee and chopped mint leaves. Does this sound disorganized? Only if you're anal retentive and have never visited Vietnam. This, my friends, is normal, and the sooner you get used to that, the sooner you'll understand my wonderful lunch.
I had never eaten at this particular market before, so when I say ubiquitous, I mean you wouldn't know one from the other once you are inside. I made my way down the far left and partially outdoor aisle of fresh veggies, hanging chickens and swishing catfish to find the food stalls in the rear of the place - and even as a three-year resident of the city, I still don't know exactly what goes into each bowl I see prepared. I spy new stuff everyday. But the last woman on the aisle knew what a foreigner wanted when she saw him. She hoisted her selection of fried spring rolls and pointed to the large bowls of noodles and fresh veggies waiting on her prep table - the idea being that they would all be mixed together in a savory concoction and dashed with spicy sauce. She nailed it.


I sat down and immediately made contact with the man to my left. He smiled a surprisingly youthful grin with a mole on his left-hand cheek sprouting as many as ten very long grey hairs. This is seen as early as men can grow facial hair and although I don't know the meaning of it exactly, I do know that it is seen as a sign of good luck, beauty and possibly wisdom for Vietnamese men. He had more hairs than I had ever seen out of this particular mole. Together we cobbled together a conversation that started with our respective ages. He held up five fingers and pointed at me. I held up five, then two, as I am fifty two. He then held up six and then seven and pointed to the woman preparing my meal. She smiled, and honestly, looked great - still in her mid fifties you would think. These numbers hit a pad of paper between us just to make sure that we both understood and then he held up seven, and lifted his chin. 70. Geez. You could easily have seen this man as a handsome young soldier with a big shock of John F. Kennedy hair atop his head - still there, yet now grey on top with dark brown under his horizontal wave from right to left. We all smiled.


The idea of youth had not evaded a one of us. The woman, I had now surmised was his wife, served me my bowl and it was all as promised - a big heaping pile of white noodles with chopped fried spring rolls, bacon and diced veggies on top. Look at the pictures of the old Vietnamese "enemy" from the war and see how skinny they appear. These people do not eat poorly, they eat handsomely - but always healthily. It's an art they have honed to perfection.
As I chowed down they were not surprised at my dexterous use of chopsticks - rather they were respectful that I had at least been around awhile and learned the local custom seamlessly. The man then blurted at me whilst pointing at my face and said "New Zealand?"
"No", I retorted, "American, American", I said.
"America?", they chortled together in unison, with eyes as round as saucers hosting a bit of wonder and respect.
"Yes", I said, "Yes". And then what happened, I could never have expected.
"Obama, #1", they blared together, "Obama #1", they chimed, with four thumbs jerked up in the air to form the universal #1 symbol.
I couldn't have smiled enough with them. For how many years have I waited for America's pride, and other country's pride in us to be restored in this, most curious of cases, by a President-elect.


As Americans, there is certainly one thing we must never forget. The world looks to us as the best example going of democracy in practice, fairness and opportunity for all. Our people have once again captivated the world by making a collective decision in the direction that will balance a previously tilted scale and hopefully shine a light of optimism on some of the less lit corners of the globe. The food stall I was dining at was buried deep in the heart of the cacophonous market but had a light that shined ever so brightly, just for the seconds that we all smiled together. Lunch with Obama. #1.
For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective


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Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI - The Little Things IX
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Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas!

One Motley Crue on the Saigon Bus #4 Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII

Just a couple of things today. O My last trip on the #4 bus was a charming story about and old soldier I met. That story will go down as one of my most pleasant experiences here. Today's story will have some merit as well, but of a different sort. The #4 today was a hard one to catch back from the airport. I had been in the area for a series of meetings all afternoon and it was certainly not my plan that I try to catch the bus from a location different from my usual and right in the middle of rush hour. But since I think I'm so fucking bright some days, I thought I knew the return route and could find a stop easily. Wrong, dumbo. When I arrived at what was certainly a proper stop with a shelter, benches and a big advertising poster, it had been inhabited by street shoe salesmen - guys who spread out big tarps all over the sidewalk, preventing walking, and fill them with all manner of shoes. Gym shoes, work boots, sandals, whatever. Vietnam is a big shoe producer and some of them are really quite nice, and cheap to boot (bad pun intended). But the last thing one needs is these guys taking over your bus stop when a light rain is falling. A #4 came and just cruised right on by. I had seen him swing towards the curb up the street a bit but when he got to me it was adios mutthaf*cka. It took me awhile to sort out what was happening. It took me until yet another #4 came and blew by. The stop had been closed because of the street construction in the center lane where I have mentioned before they are digging a big long hole and installing drainage pipe. Saigon is at sea level or below and it floods like a swamp when the rains come, which is almost all the time. So the anser was clear. Walk to the next stop. And that was easily a kilometer. When I finally arrived a #4 dutifully swung by and snatched me up. It was about 1/2 full so I got my favorite seat riding shotgun to the right of the driver. But rush hour is a predictable yet unpredictable daily event in Saigon. Everybody knows it's going to happen, and the resulting gridlock where motorbikes can cut off busses and big trucks crossing from other streets, but they act like it's a big surprise. After spending nearly 20 minutes in a gridlock where a traffic signal had gone down, somebody finally called the traffic police and got a yellow helmeted cop to the scene to sort the rowdy bikers out and let us finally pass. But in the interim the driver thought we needed some entertainment so he switched on 99.9fm, Vietnam's classic rock station and treated us to a good loud sample of Motley Crue, followed by some screaming Gothic shrew with three wailing guitars as accompaniment. I nodded in approval and did a little air guitar for the driver as he broke into a big smile. At least the crazy whiteys on the bus dug the scene. Once through the gridlock his assistant, the girl who takes your money, whispered in his ear and the station was changed to something more traditionally Vietnamese. There were a couple of old ladies in the back mind you. I'm sure they had had enough Crue for one day. Maybe a lifetime. O Once at my internet cafe I had two Cokes a "Ban Xeo Man" (Vietnamese rice flour and egg pancake, folded, full of shrimp and pork and veggies - mmmm - tasty) and a hot coffee with sweetened condensed milk before I sat down to write this. Upon beggining to write a little girl of maybe seven came in with a puppy. It was a big hit with the customers and she, of course, was in the selling business. Little girls here sell gum to foreigners and we all buy it now and again, but I'll explain more about that and why later. With me she didn't try to sell me at all. She was interested in my headphones and the music I was listening to in the computer. She came into my booth, played with the trackpad for a bit and then said "music." I gave her the earbuds and she promptly popped them in and laid her head on my lap. She was tired. She needed a break. The music I was listening to was the new album from Brian Wilson called "Lucky Old Sun" and it's a bit of a tour de force from an old beach boy who just refuses to die. If you've got the sound cranked up on your PC or Mac, you're listening to it in the podcast. The little girl rested for about 10 minutes in my lap and the staff smiled and commented that I had made a new friend. When she finished I asked her, "Good?". And she promtly said "No, no good". And scurried away. I found it to be just as sweet an ending to a day with a fairly harrowing bus chasing trial as one could have. Here now for your perusal. O Over and out.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

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Yessiree! We've gone and redesigned the whole blog in proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) fashion to make the most out of search engine's obsessions with colours, dirty words, Obama and anything involving something bad involving Obama. Boy this is gonna throw Google for a loop! A few days ago, I actually ran into a blog that used headlines like the one above because they were trying to get the most out of popular keywords. The blog was just miserably written but had a photo of a somewhat attractive twentysumthing female and a lot of pictures of flowers and wedding dresses and kitty-cats. I almost threw up. I had to purge the girl as one of my "friends" on a particular social networking service. Will the outright shilling never end? She wasn't near as cute as Lonelygirl15.

Has anyone mentioned that the reason good blogs do well is that people like to read what the writers have written? No, not a single SEO consultant can help you with that. If you suck as a writer you just suck and all the technical tinkering in the world can't help you. Or me either.

But I've done something I hope will help my readers with getting through the many times long content I put up here. Rather than forcing people to read white type through black I've reversed the equation so that you can read black type on a lighter background whilst keeping the colour highlights that have become a bit of a trademark at the Wild Wild East Dailies.

And so now, it's your job to tell me what you think. Do you like the new layout and colours, or would you like me to go back to the ImmaBlackBadAssedBlog look and continue our underground quest? Honestly, I think so many of the black on white blogs are just so visually boring and I miss the look of a good magazine design, so I'm not in a big hurry to go totally black on white - and I promise, that even with this little tweaking of the look that I won't loose any of the acerbic yet hopeful commentary many people have become fond of. This is, just truly, a way to make it easier on a lot of people's eyes and computer screens.

Look in the sidebar and find the poll to vote for the blog look. I'll keep this design for about a month and then, based on your input, make a decision on how to proceed in the future. In the meantime, you can Google the "Obama Oprah Anal Oral Sex Butt Scandal" and let me know what you find out. I'm sure somebody's got a post out there.

I'm going to finish today with two reviews that have appeared on "Blogged". You can see my Blogged rating easily in the sidebar and vote for yourself if you like. I do appreciate the comments - at least ones like these:

(9.9) - "A rare foray into the underbelly of being. Takes one back to the golden age of blogging when being a blogger was akin to reporting from the dark side of the moon. Blogging has now become fashionable as well as a slick marketing ploy. David's blog really is a breath of fresh air!!" - David A.

(9.0) - "David writes with insight and personal comments, making it rather interesting read. Once you start reading, you will come back for more. He doesn't need to advertise much, he sells you with his product, it's solid. The good old fashioned way. You can't fake this or try to copy it, it just wouldn't work. This is David's world, and it is quite a read..." - Mads M.

(9.0) - After a long day at the office, this blog is an always fascinating, hangover-free cocktail of keen observation, a nothing-is-sacred perspective and heart. Read it via e-mail ... or, for a full sensory immersion, through your browser. - Freya R.

For more on Obama, click below:

Obama to Send 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods House

Rick Wagoner Makes History - First CEO To Be Fired By A Sitting President
"I Vote For Black Man!" - Obamanation II
Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI - The Little Things IX
A sex Redesign obama For scandal The oprah Wild oral Wild butt East iPhone Dailies
"Yes We Can": Obamanation
MENSA Endorces McCain/Palin
Obama Splits Ticket, Boots Biden!
Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase!
Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas!

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue