bad hair day
I'm slowly recovering from the industrial hideousness that was PLASA, I looked at the new lighting desk, and very nice it is too. It'll be even nicer when they've finished it. When I go to these events I get depressed very quickly, there is so much stuff, and the place is full of suits trying to convince you that their product is the best, cheapest and most reliable.Genus techy seems to divide into two groups, essentially the old and the young, the old is recognisable by a general stoutness, the thinning hair is in some way individual, a pony tail perhaps, or just wild bushiness. Things that might have been quite endearing in a younger man, and just look silly now. The younger version is mostly skinny and knobbly, wears jeans, and a black t-shirt advertising some technological product or other (alternatively some sort of obscure and grungy rock band may find favour). This is definitely the accreting stage, anything that can be clipped onto a belt or hooked onto a belt loop will be; if a junior techy falls into water, he will drown, unless he can get his jeans off.
I make it a point of honour to try and avoid collecting too much stuff on these occasions, I do not really want a house filled with product catalogues any more. Swag, on the other hand is quite fun, and can become a mildly competetive and slightly silly game, this year I managed to acquire a thermos coffee mug, a stick on LED torch, another LED torch designed to go on the belt (oh dear), and several chocolates. I avoided the infinite number of pens and only took one catalogue. I was meeting a friend at the exhibition, and he phoned me to ask where I was; 'next to the stand with the belly dancer on,' was my reply. 'That's where I am' he said, 'but I can't see you'. 'I'm on the corner, behind a large bloke with really bad hair.' As I spoke, I looked around me and realised that every corner was populated by large blokes with really bad hair. We met up eventually.
The other thing I was doing yesterday was putting a bet on at the local auction rooms, my sister (as readers of The Deep North will know) is writing a biography of the painter Edward Burra, and I spotted one of his drawings in the auction. I was quite pleased to win it, and not for the maximum bid either. When I went in this morning to pick it up, I was amazed by how byzantine and inefficient the sale room was, rather like my own office, all relevant and irrelevant data was contained in great wobbly piles of paper. It took at least 40 minutes to locate the invoice, find my deposit cheque and so on, despite the presence of a number of computers these seemed to be treated with great suspicion. In many ways it is quite reassuring to find a company that is just muddling along, doing things their own way and apparently thriving. On the other hand, it is faintly irritating that they don't seem to be able to get the invoices out without jumping through all sorts of hoops.
posted by Lampy @ 9/13/2006 01:13:00 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home