Will’s View

I know that a certain suspension of disbelief is required in order to watch and enjoy most television shows/movies. Unfortunately I think some producers/directors want us to suspend a little too much disbelief.

LOST (do you have to spell it in all capitals?) is an example of this. As far as I can ascertain (I haven’t actually watched much of it) a plane crashed and the survivors were left to fend for themselves. Ok, cool, not a great plot, but there’s a little to work with there. Not much, but enough. I was expecting something akin to:

1. People crash on island
2. People have to work with each other to try and get along
3. Some of the people try and go for help and do/don’t make it
4. Depending on the outcome of 3, they either get saved or form a community on the island
5. If they form a community, it either fails miserably and they all turn into cannibals, or they all live happily ever after

The End

I for one would have been more than happy with that. There’s certain suspensions in disbelief required even for this scenario, but what happens on LOST is just absurd. They crashed on an island, cool, then they tried to go and get help, fine - still sticking to the formula, then the help attempt fails and they are stuck on the island. This is all believable and great, but then there was something about a hatch. And then when I watched a snapshot of it recently, there was someone doing surgery in a fully decked-out hospital, talking to someone else on a walkie-talkie. On a remote uninhabited island.

Did I miss something?

Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical. Of course I’ve missed something, I don’t watch the farcical show. But I think it’s a relatively long bow to draw, especially when you include the Mysterious Beast that lives in the jungle, and the conveniently placed survivors that the islanders run across periodically.

In my opinion it is just a result of lazy writing. It takes very good writers to create a show/movie that has believable characters and reasonable plot lines. LOST is just a badly written soap opera masquerading as a wonderfully original and amazingly action-packed television drama revolution. I say forsake this terrible series, and make the networks put decent shows on TV. Like MacGyver.

--> I know that a certain suspension of disbelief is required in order to watch and enjoy most television shows/movies. Unfortunately I think some producers/directors want us to suspend a little too much disbelief. LOST (do you have to spell it in all capitals?) is an example of this. As far as I can ascertain (I haven’t actually watched much of it) a plane crashed and the survivors were left to fend for themselves. Ok, cool, not a great (More...)

After almost four weeks of university, I have started reflecting on the differences between the working life and the student life, and thought I’d share some anecdotes from my time in the corporate world over summer.

Valentine’s Day

This was an interesting time to be in the office. My desk was near the secretaries on my floor, and so of course there was a lot of gossip about who was doing what, and who had received what on this romantic day of days. I remember several ‘romantic’ things being mentioned: dinners out; chocolates; roses, the usual stuff. But then one of the women mentioned that their partner of the time had actually given them an entire branch. Not just a rose, this fellow had gone over and above that, a whole branch! It had me in stitches for the entire day, thinking of a guy saying “Happy Valentine’s Day honey, I got you a branch”. Romantic.

Liquid Lunches

It is well known that many corporate types enjoy a couple of alcoholic beverages with lunch. I don’t deplore this practice, many of us have had days where it seems fitting to have a drink with lunch, either for celebration or as a stress relief. Whilst talking to one of the secretaries, I was told a humorous story with it’s roots in one of these lunches:

One of the higher-up employees (let’s call him Luke for argument’s sake) of one of the businesses near us had enjoyed quite a boozey lunch with important clients. Luke then called his secretary to ask her to cancel or reschedule his appointments for the rest of the afternoon. After hanging up from this call, the secretary decided that her charge had had a little too much to drink, and therefore he shouldn’t be driving home.

So what was she to do? Why, hide her his car keys of course!

She took them off his desk, and hid them in her drawer, and then left for home. What happened to Luke when he got into the office to look for his keys, I don’t know, but apparently he turned up to work the next day with no recollection of the treachery, and found his keys placed on his desk exactly where he thought he’d left them. None the wiser. That’s corporate responsibility for you!

Moisturiser

A lot of the people who read this blog have heard me talk at length on this, so I shall keep this brief. As I said earlier, I was placed in the midst of quite a few secretaries, and as most people know, secretaries tend to gossip. I have no problem with this, but it just so happened that the topic of conversation for at least two weeks of my time in the office was tanning moisturisers. I cannot for the life of me remember the different brands, but there was heated debates as to which was better. For two weeks! It really did almost drive me mad.

--> After almost four weeks of university, I have started reflecting on the differences between the working life and the student life, and thought I’d share some anecdotes from my time in the corporate world over summer. Valentine’s Day This was an interesting time to be in the office. My desk was near the secretaries on my floor, and so of course there was a lot of gossip about who was doing what, and who had received what on (More...)

Dear Marketing Department at Reach Toothbrushes Inc.,

I like your toothbrushes. I’ve been using them to clean my teeth for many years. They have done a reasonably good job to date, and I have had no reason to complain, until now.

Buying a new toothbrush is somewhat of an experience for me, I’m not a frequent toothbrush-purchaser, merely one who likes to be discerning. I like the ones with the little fingers that massage your gums. But that’s irrelevant now, completely immaterial, after the unfolding of recent events.

Whilst down at the local supermarket, I decided it was time for a new toothbrush. The range wasn’t great and as I’m a student it was even more restricted by my limited funds. In this situation I was stuck with a Reach toothbrush. Within this limited range, there were only two colours: a horrid purple; and a lovely green. As I was pressed for time, I choose hurriedly, and chose the green.

Usually when designing a product, one tries to make it as appealing and aesthetically pleasing as possible. This sometimes means the use of unorthadox materials and colours, but in no way should the design of the item impede its function. I don’t feel that it should be necessary to explain that a vomit-green coloured toothbrush is far from appealing to the general public, an a perfect example of (bad) design over function.

To this day I still reflect on how ridiculous it is to make a toothbrush in the colour of particularly lurid vomit. Who came up with that? Was it marketing? Was it the design engineers? Whoever it was, I beg you, remove the product from circulation, and fire the people responsible. It’s an atrocity.

Yours,

Will Midgley (a traumatised customer)

--> Dear Marketing Department at Reach Toothbrushes Inc., I like your toothbrushes. I’ve been using them to clean my teeth for many years. They have done a reasonably good job to date, and I have had no reason to complain, until now. Buying a new toothbrush is somewhat of an experience for me, I’m not a frequent toothbrush-purchaser, merely one who likes to be discerning. I like the ones with the little fingers that massage your gums. But that’s (More...)

Some of you may know that my birthday is coming up, so I thought it may be a cool experiment to disseminate a list of what I want via the Internet! Now don’t take this as me saying I want or need a birthday present, I know most of the people that read this are students/overseas, so I don’t expect anything from them, us students being poor as we are! It’s just that some people will buy presents whether you tell them to or not, and inevitably they end up asking me for ideas, so here they are:

• An Apple wireless Mighty Mouse
• An Apple Apple accessory.
• A backup hard-drive of some variety.
• Something to do with the comedy festival.
• Something to do with the Grand Prix!
• Tickets to a gig of some variety.

I think that should give most people enough info for ideas. Alternatively you can ask me for a link and you can send me money via PayPal!

--> Some of you may know that my birthday is coming up, so I thought it may be a cool experiment to disseminate a list of what I want via the Internet! Now don’t take this as me saying I want or need a birthday present, I know most of the people that read this are students/overseas, so I don’t expect anything from them, us students being poor as we are! It’s just that some people will buy presents whether you tell them to or not, and inevitably they end up asking me for ideas, so here they are: An Apple wireless Mighty Mouse An Apple Apple accessory. A backup hard-drive of some variety. Something to do with the comedy festival. Something to do with the Grand Prix! Tickets to a gig of some variety. I think that should give most people enough info for ideas. Alternatively you can ask me for a link and you can send me money via PayPal!

I detest key beeps. I understand their function in life when touch-tone telephones are concerned, the keys have to make a tone in order to connect to the exchange. And then the tones are decoded and translated into a number, or something like that.

I do not, however, understand their primary function in modern mobile phones. I admit they do have their uses for people who are vision impaired, or those users that have touch screen phones (such as the iPhone), so that they know what they are typing. But for the rest of humanity what is the point? While there is a certain poetry in the fact that each text message you write is a brand-new composition in the world of mobile telephony, surely the novelty wears off after the second, maybe third text message you send.

And then there is the annoyance they create for the world at large; as it tends to be the people who are most oblivious to their surroundings, and who have lots of text-friends, which leave their key-beeps on. This means that the rest of society is aurally bombarded with a rapid succession of nonsense tones, whilst these people try and communicate with their acquaintances on the other end of the mobile network. And just as it is rude to talk loudly into a mobile phone on public transport (especially saying “Sorry, you’re breaking up” whilst inside a tunnel), I consider it equally so to message loudly on public transport. These people are a public menace, and ought to be dealt with as such.

--> I detest key beeps. I understand their function in life when touch-tone telephones are concerned, the keys have to make a tone in order to connect to the exchange. And then the tones are decoded and translated into a number, or something like that. I do not, however, understand their primary function in modern mobile phones. I admit they do have their uses for people who are vision impaired, or those users that have touch screen phones (such (More...)