theLaconic

There can only be one

In the last two weeks it's the same sad story: work, work and mmmm some more work. I really don't think I have ever had to work at this intensity for such a long period of time. Don't get me wrong I am the one who is defining the level of effort and therefore the number of hours I work. Yes I could of said we are just doing an average website and just worked normal hours for the last two weeks. The trouble is that's not the way I work and that's not the type of work that win awards.

And funnily enough that brings me to my next subject I picked up two more awards this week. We attended the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Mixx awards on Wednesday night in a fancy Hotel of Times Square. We won a gold award for the 2004 IBM US Open campaign for Brand Awareness and a Silver for the IBM Helpdesk site in the same category, which was nice. Apart from actually winning the award we also got some sweet goody bags chock full of WebCams, Apple mice, USB memory sticks and a JVC Sirus Satellite Radio. Because the awards are part of New York's advertising week we also had an invite to a cruise around Manhattan on the Forbes Yacht 'The Highlander'.

As you can probably guess by the name the 114ft yacht is full of tartan fabric and strong scottish theme running throughout, this theme obviously spilled over into the hiring of the crew because we were piped aboard by a Scottish Piper standing on above the bridge. Drinks flowed freely as we sailed south on the Hudson and sailed around the Statue of Liberty while the sun was setting on the manhattan skyline. Onboard Simon and I meet Alan another English guy who works for MOne our media agency and we amused out American hosts by reciting famous English naval quotes and generally taking the piss.

As the gin's took effect I decided to start to only talk like Sean Connery which amused Simon and I greatly. All things being considered it was one of my favourite New York moments so far.

Barney contest

My friend Barney (from the London office) has been in town this week. He is over with Amanda (who was the one who hired me almost 5 years ago) for a workshop with their client. I meet up with Barney on Thursday night and meet his brother's fiancee Elle who has just moved here with his brother, this might have some significance if I end up helping them adjust to life in New York City.

Anyway, Barney's last visit proved to very amusing, and I had high hopes for this weekend. I haven't been disappointed and hopefully Barney will have time in the next few days to write something but until then I have decided to run a caption contest.

your caption here. click for larger image.

Post your captions in the comments section if you can be bothered (I'm guessing that not many people will) .

New favorite website, part 3

Okay I have quite a few new favorite websites but this is so special and funny that it deserves a post to itself.

Overheard in New York is a website that collects snippets of conversation that are overheard in New York:

You're Never Too Old to Quit

Guy #1: Hey, what's up?
Guy #2: Not much.
Guy #1: I heard you went to the hospital or something.
Guy #2: Yeah, I stopped breathing. --F train

Click this link to enjoy the streets and subways of New York: Overheard in New York: The Voice of the Big Apple.

Winter is coming

The weather has started to cool off, we are still getting lovely sunny days in the high twenties but the nights and evenings are cooling off. But there are some other tell tell signs that show we are approaching winter:

I spotted this fly poster yesterday. Burton Snowboards are opening their own store next week in the heart of New York's shopping mecca, SOHO. This is just round the corner from the Apple store and is another reason why I will be avoiding SOHO when I am trying not to spend any money.

Down South

The Sheraton Imperial's roof in Raleigh, NC.

This is one of the only six photographs I had time to take when I had to visit Raleigh, North Carolina for business.

I knew that I might have to attend two days worth of meetings but I was expecting to leave New York on Tuesday morning. What I didn't realise is the time I would have to gotten up at to make a 9am meeting so I took the easy way out and flew down on Monday night.

We had two solid days of meetings in a windowless conference room which was a test of conscious state. But the project is now under way, and I expect that I going to have to fly down to North Carolina a few more times in the following months.

North Carolina is about 450 miles down the Atlantic coast from New York and it only takes one and half hours on a pretty small plane. These planes on carry about 50 passengers and the cabins are so narrow that I am sure that I could lie across the with my and be able to touch both windows.

This is a link to Raleigh on Google Maps, just in case you want to know where it is - something I had to do on Tuesday morning.

At last I have...

...some time to post an entry to this blog.

So what have I been up to? As you can probably guess I have been quite busy at work. My friend Les always used to say 'never get off the boat' when he returned from any absence from Steel Design and as I get more and more responsibility with my job I hear myself saying the same phrase.

So I returned to work and found that all hell has broken loose with several high profile projects ready for a little bit of the old green magic.

So that's work covered off, but what else have I been up to? Well I got a free ticket to the US Open for last Wednesday's night session because of the work we did for IBM, so this is slightly work related but it is closer to a social life than I have been for quite a while.

Me, Andrew 'never trust a kiwi' Fair and Sunny Kwok.

In all the years I lived in Streatham, I never made it to the tennis at Wimbledon, so I can't compare the US Open. It is an american sporting event so it's not as stuffy as I would expect Wimbledon to be and I guess there is more talking, more beer and more hot dogs (and other grilled food stuffs). The stadium atmosphere was quite impressive but I suppose that's what you get when you are sitting with 22,000 tennis fans in the warm summer night.