The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Jesus, I think I’ve just joined the BNP!

You see tomorrow is the 11th anniversary since my Dad died and on Sunday, it’s a year since I moved to Hong Kong.

I find it amazing how quick time flies [and not just when you’re having fun!] and I also find it amazing how much detail you can remember when you really think about it.

OK … so a parent dying is pretty bloody significant and we all know the brain loves to play ‘director’ with your memories … however there are certain things from both events that I can remember like it’s happening in real time.

Anyway, whilst the HK experience has been great fun … I still find my Dad’s anniversary pretty hard to handle … however instead of doing the usual and writing a post about that horrible time, I’m going to write something happy … something that will flood my mind with good thoughts … something that will give you get a glimpse of my life with my Dad.

Saying that, I should warn you this is going to be very indulgent, exceedingly sentimental and saccharine infused, so if you don’t want to go any further I totally understand.

It was a Sunday evening.

I’m not exactly sure what time – hell, I’m not even sure what year – but I do know it was evening, he was sitting in the brown rocking chair in the lounge and I was sitting on his knee in my pyjamas. Infact, if memory serves me, I think it was during the school holidays – or more precisely – towards the end of the school holidays and I was probably giving him a kiss goodnight before I went to bed.

Anyway, as was the norm, we would have a chat before I went upstairs.

We’d talk about our day … what we’d done, what we liked, what we wanted to do and there’d always be lots of laughter, hugs and kisses.

Now while that might not sound like the sort of ‘Father and son’ time you see in ads or Hollywood movies … these moments were always a magical time of bonding and love and I would go to bed feeling warm and happy.

I can’t quite remember how the subject came up, but I do remember that at some point I showed my dad a picture of a mail order digital clock radio that was being advertised in one of the Sunday Newspaper magazines we got delivered.

It was small and white with rounded edges and had a couple of miniature dials and switches on the top that controlled the frequency, volume and whether you woke up to the radio or the alarm in the morning.

It even had a button called ‘SLEEP’ that turned the radio off all by itself.

ALL BY ITSELF!!! If that’s not technology from the 3rd dimension, I don’t know what is!

Now what you have to understand – apart from this being many, many, many years ago – is that because of my tender years and the fact my family didn’t have much cash, my only exposure to this sort of next generation technology came from scouring the Argos/Kay’s catalogue [which were like bibles to me] or when I went to Paul’s house, because his parents were loaded and even had 2 [TWO!!!!] cars.

[I’ll quickly ignore the fact one was a Brown Volvo estate and the other an Orange VW Beetle!]

Anyway, this clock radio captured my imagination.

I must have looked at that ad in the magazine a thousand times … reading and re-reading every word like it was the secret to life … and so when my Dad and I were having our nightly ‘chat’, I brought up the subject of this amazing thing I’d seen – an amazing thing from thousands of years in future that somehow was available in the Sunday Telegraph magazine!

Believe it or not, this wasn’t some strategy to get him to buy it for me – that wasn’t how my parents worked and besides, it cost SEVEN POUNDS 95 PENCE [+ two pounds packing and package] – I did it because I was genuinely captivated by it all and happily rabbited on about every feature and detail for ages, confident he would be as astounded by it all, as I had been.

Now of course this product wasn’t new to him – he might not of had much cash, but he was very aware of what was going on in consumerland – and yet despite all this, he looked at me like every word being spoken was the most interesting and exciting thing he’d ever heard.

I can see his eyes now.

His big, kind, lovely blue eyes …

Beautiful.

Anyway, so I went on about this radio, telling him about the ‘SLEEP’ feature when out of the blue, he said, “Would you like it?”

I couldn’t even comprehend the question. I didn’t get things like this … not unless it was my birthday or Christmas and even then, seven pounds 95 pence [+ two pounds packing and package] was a fortune, you could buy houses or cars for that couldn’t you???

So there was a very long pause as I considered everything and then, plucking up the courage to be so bold, started to nod my head vigorously.

After a couple of seconds I looked at my Dad and realised he was staring intently at my face … staring at me like I was the most precious and beautiful thing in his World … and then I felt his hand by the side of my face, gently caressing my cheek before saying, “OK my sweet boy, we’ll see what we can do”.

And it was at that point I didn’t care whether I got this magical clock radio or not – I just loved being with my Dad … my Dad who listened, communicated, cared and loved.

Quite often the predictions either amount to state-the-obvious shite [ie: people will use the internet so companies will advertise on it] or a more abstract point of view [ie: the Christian Church will buy Walmart so they can count customers as followers] … however what is common is that in most cases, what people say will happen, doesn’t – or at least not in the detail they suggested.

And another thing that drives me nuts is when people claim they had the idea for something, even though when you ask them about it – you realise what they had originally said was so ambiguous [and so long ago] that it was probably the mad ramblings of a 4 year old child.

“I WISH TOMATO KETCHUP WAS GREEN!”

Zoom forward god-knows how long, and some marketing fuckwit at Heinz [or possibly the same person who had the ‘idea’ in the first place] decides to launch this:

Mind you, given sooooooooooooooooo many people regard these pseudo-Nostradamus’ as geniuses, I’d like to go on record and say I foresee a time where transportation is powered by water.

Got it? Cool – that’s my legacy sorted out then.

Look, I have no problem with people making statements about the future – hell, I do it all the time, especially because I can always say “it hasn’t happened yet, come back to me in 10 years and then we can discuss it” if someone disagrees with me – but so many of these self-appointed social commentators express themselves with absolute authority and [stupidly] give specific timeframes to when we’ll see it all happening.

They need to take some lessons from politicians.

Anyway …

The point of this post [and there is one. Somewhere] is that amongst all these folk who profess to know specifically what people are going to think/do/say/believe in the next 12 months, there are some who are genuinely smarty-pants and one of those is an old colleague of mine, Richard Watson.

Apart from being in possession of one of the greatest heads of hair since Brian May, Richard is one of those over-achieving clever buggers as demonstrated by the fact he is a bona-fide consultant, author, speaker, futurist and founder of the brilliant NowAndNext.

Anyway, he’s already smarter, nicer and cleverer than me so I don’t want to be too complimentary to him – however I do want to draw your attention to a chart he’s just created detailing the trends & timelines for new tech in 2010 because it’s bloody interesting and also very cool to look at.

You can DOWNLOAD IT HERE … and if it turns out that only 20% of what Richard say’s is right – you still have 12 months of sounding more interesting and intelligent at dinner parties/pubs/BBQ’s than the loud-mouthed, one-dimensional advertising ‘guru’ who is declaring “2010 is the year Apple will launch another iPod, except they’ll give it a different name so the label and style whores will think it’s a totally-new, must-have product”.

See, win:win … except for me, given I am that loud-mouthed, one-dimensional ad twat.

Saying that, I’ve never regarded them as a great ‘brand’– I don’t think people would actively go out of their way to transact with them if they had a cheaper/easier-to-get alternative to hand – however they are very well run and managed and like my friends at Google, they have realised there is huge brand and profit potential by developing products and services that move them into areas where they will infiltrate into other parts of people’s lives other than their digital habits and/or postal collection routine.

Now I’m not going to talk much about Kindle – that’s a post for another day, especially when the stuff we’ve done for them and Google hopefully comes to fruition – however there are 2 things that have happened recently that has made me think their focus on their new digital book reader has led to them failing in their goal to be ‘Earth’s most customer-centric company.’

Issue 1

So I got a new Kindle at Christmas … and as usual, it got delivered in their customary brown box.

Anyway, just as I was about to open it, I saw this logo on prominent display …

Now obviously they think this is a good thing to say – either because they know people are fed up of having to spend 30 minutes trying to open their DVD’s and CD’s or because they have had complaints in the past – but for some reason, their ‘frustration free’ packaging was errrrrrm, fairly frustrating, which is why the only way I could get my hands on my new toy was to do this …

Who the hell did Amazon get it certified with? NASA?

OK … OK … I know I can’t even wire a plug … but come on, surely a cardboard box should be easy to open, especially if it claims to be ‘frustration free’.

Issue 2

So after almost breaking my arm opening the box, I decided to use the machine and guess what – it didn’t work.

Well it worked, but when I tried to buy a book, it never said any was available.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So I rang Amazon in America and they said to me that like iTunes, the books available were determined by region and so the ‘way around it’ was to change where I said I was located [currently HK] and put either my UK, US or Australian home address.

While it was a bit of a pain, it only took 2 minutes to do and suddenly my Kindle was working as expected and I spent the rest of the day buying more books than you’d find in your local library.

All good?

Well yes … until the next morning when I got an email from Amazon saying that they thought I was trying to ‘cheat the system’ and unless I could prove I was a resident of the US, then they would have to freeze my account because there are strict rules regarding which books are available for which country.

To say I saw red is a massive understatement – and it only got worse given it took me 20 minutes to find an email address to respond to – so conjuring up my father’s spirit, I fired off a pretty harsh email telling them to basically go fuck themselves because [1] they told me to change my main address and [2] what’s the point having a Kindle if publishers don’t want to sell books in the country you’re in.

Twenty four hours later I got a reply apologising, saying there must be some misunderstanding because the previous email was only sent because they wanted to offer me the best service possible because their goal is to be Earth’s most customer centric company.

Yeah right … twats.

The thing is, I’ve spent a bloody fortune with Amazon over the years … and they have always been great, even when there’s been a problem … so I find it quite interesting that the moment they launch their own product, some core pillars of their business go to pot.

Whilst we may be a society that can be seduced by the cool and new … companies cannot afford to view good customer service as an option, especially when they have built up a great reputation over many, many years.