Looking through my miscellaneous photos, this Thai restaurant window display caught my eye.
As a former adguy, I can imagine the meeting where they agreed on this marketing strategy. (CLIENT: “I don’t see any food.” AGENCY: “Everybody knows what food looks like, what people want to see is that we give them baskets of it. And our prices are so low, we’ll probably go out of business and that makes us sad. Focus groups loved it!” CLIENT: “Oh. Well, okay then, I guess.”
On a culture shock scale of one to ten, riding a camel in India gets a ten.
Riding the metro in Bangkok gets a one.
As long as we’re doing comparisons, there’s a clock tower in Kolkata that kind of familiar.
Here’s another comparison: Can you tell that the man in the picture on the left, is 107 years old? (Not the guy in the hat – the other guy.) I saw him again the following year. Can you tell he’s 108? (You can? Wow, you’re good!)
I took this fairly innocuous picture of a little village dolly but when I was going through my photos, I stopped. There seems to be a dog in the shot.
Can you see him? (Look to the right of the girl.) I don’t remember a dog being there before. You have to admit, that’s a bit out of the ordinary. Then I noticed, as I’m writing this, it’s almost Halloween. Is this a ghost dog? (What other explanation could there possibly be?)
And what about this monkey? Could this be a ghost monkey?
No. It’s a real monkey. Would a ghost monkey be hanging onto the wire like he’s afraid he’ll fall? You’re letting your imagination run away with you.
But don’t feel bad, I’ve seen whole cities let their imaginations run away with them. In Bangkok, for example, you can find post-nuclear war architecture – even though there has never been a nuclear war! (Except for the end of World War II, of course.)
Since we have a little extra time, here’s a quick review: Is this a harmless snake or a poisonous one?
Check the color of the bands and figure it out. But hurry, he’s getting closer…red, black, yellow, black…whew! Harmless. Go ahead, pick him up. Give him a cute name…Snaky, Stripey,…No wait! (Red, yellow, black, yellow,…) POISON SNAKE! RUN!