Pillow talk leaves me bamboozled

The TV channel that tends to get most of my attention bombards me each night with advertisements urging me to take out an insurance policy to pay for my impending funeral and then entices me to buy a bamboo pillow that will allow me to sleep the sleep of the just and hopefully increase my life expectancy.

You probably thought, as I did, that a bamboo pillow is made from bamboo. Wrong! It’s the pillowslip that is made from bamboo, bamboo fibre that is. The pillow itself is made from foam.

Foam with a memory, apparently. Well anyway that’s what the salesman told me, lurking behind the counter in one of those pop-up shops that come and go in those wide aisles of a shopping mall in a nearby city.

The day I visited there was a mountebank claiming to cure most of your illnesses with a multi-coloured lamp beamed on the affected part, two stalls selling a huge variety of psychedelic covers for your iPhone, the inevitable chairs that will shake your booty if you dare to stick a two dollar coin in the slot and now two competing well-stocked mini-marts selling bamboo pillows.

I was intrigued. Bamboo fibre I was told is naturally anti-bacterial, hypoallergenic, breathable, cool, strong, flexible, soft and has a luxurious shiny appearance. It absorbs and evaporates sweat very quickly and is three or four times more absorbent than cotton.

About now the well-versed young salesman pauses to draw breath and then goes on to expound that environmentally-friendly bamboo yields ten times that of cotton, without using fertilisers or pesticides. Armed with this information I wondered out loud why there aren’t more Panda’s in the world, but my cynicism is unacknowledged and the young man is now joined by an attractive dark-skinned young saleslady coming to the rescue of her colleague who is blissfully unaware that he needs rescuing.

When I express surprise that the pillow itself is actually made of foam rather than bamboo she tells me that the memory foam’s most unique quality is its temperature sensitivity, which softens the foam when in contact with the body. Memory foam, she gushes, moulds to your curvatures, cradling areas that normally receive pressure and supporting areas that typically do not. Truly miraculous.

I convey my disillusionment however given that when Susan Paul drops the bowling ball on the pillow and doesn’t break the egg beneath the accompanying spiel clearly implies that it’s the bamboo that’s the hero, not the foam.

This narrative is lost on my two young salespersons who I suspect have never had to suffer monotonous TV ads. They probably download movies or watch Netflix; I envy their innocence.

I can get two pillows for $79 they tell me, but when I suggest that having pillowcases featuring bamboo slogans and illustrations will hardly enhance the appearance of our immaculate bedroom they offer as an extra a variety of pastel-coloured bamboo pillowcases, logo free. This bumps up the price tag considerably.

I’m then told that thousands of customers swear by their bamboo pillows.

I’ll bet they do, some louder than others.

“Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.” - Max Amsterdam

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The world mourns a gentle giant

The international awe with which the late great Jonah Lomu was held may have come as a surprise to many New Zealanders; even Buckingham Palace chipped in with condolences as the world lamented the loss of this rugby colossus.

I had some inkling of his potential popularity back in 1995 while holidaying in Florida. We were on a mini-bus and I recognised the South African accent of a man sitting in the front seat of the vehicle next to the driver. To initiate a conversation I leaned over and said to him “Remind me again, who won the Rugby World Cup?” He swung round and in a friendly manner demanded to know where I came from. When I told him New Zealand he said “Sorry Kiwi, we did.”

To our amazement the bus driver, who was an African-American, said “No, the real winner was rugby.”

Naturally the South African and I wanted to know just how he could make such an utterance, both assuming that no one in America would have been the slightest bit interested in rugby, but he claimed that the contest was well-publicised and widely viewed.

The conversation almost instantly turned to Jonah Lomu and his role in the triumphant All Black win over England which must have been played and replayed on sports shows to a worldwide audience. The impact of the images of that one game would have set Jonah up for life.

It’s an absolute tragedy that his life was such a short one.

Jonah didn’t feature much in the final against South Africa in 1995. The Springboks managed him masterfully that day, herding him into the middle of the field where he could be lowered to the ground by the loose forwards rather then letting him skirt the outer fringes of the field where he might have wreaked havoc.

And always, when someone as instantly recognisable as Lomu dies, there is a great outpouring of acclamation and glorification. Unlike others however Jonah received much justifiable adoration when he was alive, yet he seemed to have kept his feet on the ground and his outward humility was admirable.

Of course he wasn’t perfect. Three marriages before he turned forty seemed excessive, but my disdain for his “boom-boxed” car is perhaps more of a reflection of my lack of tolerance due to ageing than a serious misdemeanour on Jonah’s part.

But as rugby correspondent Paul Lewis wrote “He was known for the ferocity of his running on the field and his gentleness off it, a dichotomy prized by rugby people and perhaps the natural state of a Pacific Islander.”

I couldn’t possibly comment on his prowess as a rugby player; I’m not really qualified to talk about sport.

I gave up cricket when I found facing a fast-bowler was like standing on the runway at Masterton’s Motorplex and when a car is 22 yards away, trying to get out of the way.

I stopped playing rugby because of illness and fatigue; the coach was sick and tired of me.

The last time I participated in any sport was when I went skiing and broke a leg.

Fortunately, it wasn’t one of mine.

“I always say to people that you have never seen the best of me, and that’s what I mean - I’ve never been fully fit.” - Jonah Lomu

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Pleased to remember, the 5th of November

At school we were taught that a fellow with the unlikely name of Guido Fawkes had once tried to blow up the British parliament. England was closer to us then than it is now and annually we were encouraged to recall this dastardly deed and in the process make ourselves a little pocket money which we were then encouraged to blow on fireworks.

This may have been a brilliant commercial conspiracy encouraged by Nobel and his gunpowder manufacturers, and might have even encompassed our history teachers, but I suspect that it was merely a customary practice maintained over the years and we were reasonably keen to keep it going.

On November the fifth in 1940’s Masterton the early morning streets were alive with the sound of music as receptive citizenry threw coinage towards the gaggle of kids who turned up in groups of four or five every few minutes on their front lawns and projected their voices at the main bedroom which was invariably at the front the of the house.

Provided you had a credible Guy and a chorus of friends with acceptable vocal skills, money literally flew out of those windows.

We lived in Lansdowne and for weeks before the big day we would shape our Guys using our dads’ old pants and shirts stuffed with straw with a flour sack for the head. We would set off, pulling the Guy in home-made carts at 6 in the morning and this gave us two hours before breakfast and school to hound the sleeping citizenry who almost always good naturedly opened their curtains to our intrusion and threw alms into our arms.

Although we would chant “penny for the Guy” inflation had decreed that threepences and sixpences were the least you would expect, and the odd florin and a very odd half-a-crown were sometimes proffered, usually from folk who had been so overwhelmed with Guys and their choristers that they had run out of the smaller coinage.

Four threepences made a shilling and there were twenty shillings in a pound and a pound would buy a huge amount of fireworks. That night, with darkness falling at a more respectable hour than it does today, our families would gather to watch our hard-earned money go up in flames.

The climax of the evening was supposed to be the throwing of the Guy on the bonfire, but this was more often than not discouraged because it seemed a little gruesome to a community that had just come out of a world war and anyway often the clothes you used for the Guy were the same ones your father used to don to work his vegetable garden.

This word picture is starting to sound like a Norman Rockwell illustration of the era, but it’s how I remember it.

Although fireworks featured on the fifth of November this year, scaring the living daylights out of the canine and equine population, the only street merchants were the trick and treat brigade who a few days earlier were knocking on your front door demanding candy while their protective parents hid covertly on the footpath.

Oh how I miss the good old days.

Except of course, they weren’t really that good.

“If you’ve never seen a real, fully developed look of disgust, tell your son how you conducted yourself when you were a boy.” - Elbert Hubbard

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Going back to the future

A new radio station has been brought to my attention with the appropriate name of Magic. (105.5 FM if you’re curious). For septuagenarians and others, the music has a magic quality; it’s the sounds we grew up with.

The music is melodic, the words have a clarity not evident in much of today’s popular music and the lyrics generally talk of love between members of the opposite sex or other interesting themes like tips on playing poker (Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”) or a seaman desperate to abandon ship (The Beach Boys’ “The Sloop John B”).

And they’re not asexual. Lulu sings “I’m a Tiger” with a sensual growl that would stir the blood of most young men and Nancy Sinatra does the same when she tells us her boots were made for walking.

Today’s pop offerings couldn’t hold a candle to the music of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s which Magic’s strapline claims they “keep alive.” As someone recently said, “It’s called rap music because the “c” accidently fell off the printer.”

I know I’m right about this, except I had the same argument with my parents about their music when I was growing up.

After I left college my father in his wisdom sent me to Palmerston North to learn the trade of my ancestors under the guidance of another Master butcher. I used to do deliveries around the city on a bike with a basket on the front that Granville in Open All Hours would have been proud of. A regular recipient of our fine meats was a Mr Sandys who sadly was bedridden. His wife was a wonderful pastry-cook and would regularly have a hot morsel for the butcher-boy from her well-appointed kitchen.

The garage at the end of their drive was padlocked and I looked through a crack in the door one day and espied a 1926 Austin Seven coupe which I immediately coveted. Mrs Sandys wasn’t sure if her husband would part with it and she ushered me into his darkened bedroom on a number of occasions where protracted negotiations took place until he finally agreed to sell me the vehicle for 100 pounds. My weekly take-home pay at the time was six pounds and tuppence so one hundred pounds was a small fortune to a relatively penurious butcher-boy.

However I had opened a Post Office savings account when I was at primary school which had a credit balance of around one hundred pounds and so I purchased my first car.

I painted “Shake, Rattle and Roll” on the driver’s door, a popular song of the time performed by Bill Haley and the Comets that aptly described the ride caused by the superannuated springing system.

With the hood down I’d hoped it might be a chick magnet, though I’m not sure that expression was actually in vogue then. It didn’t have the desired affect; though I’m blaming the driver for that, not the car.

The point of all this is that the automobile industry has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in the intervening years; the Austin Seven could in no way compare with the car I drive today.

So how come the music’s not as good?

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Are we missing the boat?

News, either via newspaper or television, is just a form of entertainment. Advertisers throng around it to get their own messages across and we blindly follow. A few short weeks ago the news seem to consist almost entirely of incredibly distressing images of the exodus of refugees fleeing war-torn Middle Eastern countries looking for a better life in the more prosperous European Union nations.

No doubt the evacuation continues apace, but we’ve moved on to other headlines like the Chris Cairns trial and the Rugby World Cup. Both occurring in Great Britain where I suspect most of the populous won’t be the slightest bit interested in either event.

For Europe the influx of refugees will either be a feast or a famine. The saying goes that economic growth is essentially productivity combined with workers and when numbers for both are rising steadily, countries prosper. In wealthy countries, like most of those in the European Union, populations are shrinking and in Germany, who has charitably agreed to take hundreds of thousands of the fleeing migrants, the population is predicted to shrink from 81.3 million as of today to around 71 million by 2060. So there may be method in what is perceived to be their generous madness.

In his book, How migration shaped our world, Ian Goldin, the Director of Oxford University’s Martin School says “Migrants are a disproportionately dynamic force globally. Innovative and entrepreneurial, they create a higher-than-average number of patents in many countries and start businesses more frequently than the locals. In the 19th century, a third of the population of Sweden, Ireland and Italy emigrated to America and other countries and the U.S. is the best example of how dynamic a country of immigrants can be.”

New Zealanders in general and Winston Peters in particular seemed reluctant to accept more refugees or immigrants especially if their culture is not akin to ours. Those opposed to bringing in more foreigners imagine a cabal of unskilled refugees being a burden on our social welfare system and lowering wages by their seemingly uncanny ability to live on the smell of an oily rag.

Just last week the managers of Auckland’s Indian restaurant chain Masala were heavily fined for employing migrant workers for long hours at $2.64 an hour, so there is some substance to the fears expressed.

With a shortage of housing in Auckland where most of our new arrivals seemed destined to settle, and the fact that many people in this country are struggling to make ends meet, it is understandable that there is a reluctance to encourage more refugees than the agreed quota.

But migrants could provide a long term economic boom and we certainly need something to kick-start our moribund economy. According to Goldin, if rich nations around the world were to admit enough migrants to expand their labour force by a mere 3%, the world would be $356 billion richer – not only because of the productivity gains in the wealthy countries, but because migrants send so much money back home.

But fear not, none of this debate is ever going to make the prime-time news.

“Apparently one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think its Colin.” - Tommy Cooper

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The pitfalls of liquidity

When I was a youngster my father used to give me advice about the perils of drinking. Not to totally warn me off the demon drink; but “Stick to beer” he used to say. I noted, somewhat sardonically, that despite this homily he did enjoy the occasional whisky himself. He warned me off spirits, but kept his greatest dehortation for the imbibing of wine. “People who drink wine,” he opined “Were destined to become alcoholics.” To emphasise the point he reminded me that back then they actually called alcoholics “winos.”

However we’ve recently found out that the real “demon drink” is Coca-Cola. Infused with the 21st century’s most despised poison, sugar, it is causing obesity and diabetes.

Sugary carbonated beverages have always been readily available to the unsuspecting populous, why they have only recently become dangerous to consume is not explained.

Last week on Seven Sharp the two giggling Gerties that front the show interviewed the CEO of Coca-Cola Australasia wanting to know what he was going to do about his deadly product. Looking lost for words, the best answer he could come up with was that he was reducing the size of the cans. Pretty well every product on the supermarket shelves are going down in size, but being sold at the same price, so his solution is hardly revolutionary. The Seven Sharp hosts trotted out the old hoary chestnut about Coca-Cola being cheaper than milk; it’s not of course, but the media never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

My father was a generous supplier of fizzy drink to our household, sometimes buying the rare Schweppes product from Moore Wilson’s, but more often the mixed range from the Wairarapa Aerated Water Company better known by its acronym WACO. Schweppes seemed to only have one flavour, an orange product called Palato whereas the WACO range was far more extensive with the usual orange, raspberry, lime and lemon varieties and also cola, creaming soda and a blue coloured concoction appropriately called blue lagoon.

But the locals were soon overwhelmed by the brash American juggernaut and the Coca-Cola range caused the small bottlers in New Zealand’s town and cities to shut up shop leaving us with Coke, Fanta and Sprite and a less colourful world.

Then wine suddenly gained new respectability. After the government paid vintners to pull out all their vines because the wrong varieties had been planted a revitalised industry built up to serve a thirsty throng who had never had the cautioning words of my father ringing in their ears.

Sophisticated marketing was the key and the best wordsmiths available were summoned to compose sentences for the labels. An example: “Mouth filling, fresh and supple with good depth of cherry/red berry spice flavours and finely integrated smokey oak aromas abound.” This on a bottle of Pinot Noir from Nelson that a dinner guest assured me was an “audacious little wine, which left a subtle hint of gooseberry and passion fruit on the palate.”

I seriously considered having him committed.

So which is the lesser of the two evils; sugary drinks or drinks served with sugary sentences?

Both are deadly in the long run, I suspect.

“Is it possible to get a cup of coffee-flavoured coffee anymore in this country? What happened with coffee? Did I miss a meeting? They have every other flavour but coffee-flavoured coffee. They have mochaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, al pacino…coffee doesn’t need a menu, it needs a cup.” – Dennis Leary

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Taking care of business

Lots of new words and phrases continually enter the lexicon. “Going forward” springs to mind, now in prolific use instead of saying “in future” like we used to.

The Prime Minister is fond of saying “at the end of the day” and its usage is now widespread.

“At this point in time” entered the glossary many years ago and is still heard regularly, but is merely an affectatious way of saying “now.”

A new word we will have to come to grips with is “Uber.” According to my trusty old Chambers dictionary uber means prototype and the word is now being used as a brand name for an amateur taxi service. And so a painful change is in the offing for taxi operators with a system that effectively lets anyone become a taxi driver using their own car through a proprietary mobile payment and passenger matching system.

Rapid technological change is more often than not distressing for those affected and the outcomes are littered along the highway of broken dreams with companies like Kodak, Betamax and the former mobile phone giant Nokia.

As far as I am aware this new technology has not yet reached the Wairarapa, but I suspect it is only a matter of time. It is a disruptive element that threatens the taxi industry worldwide and has been greeted with outrage by the incumbents. The anger is understandable when you consider that taxi drivers have made significant investments in their vehicles and their licenses.

Those who welcome the competition however point out that New Zealand has the unenviable reputation of being the most costly place in the world to catch a cab, despite the industry being deregulated in 1989. Christchurch, Queenstown, Wellington and Auckland all rank in the top ten of having the most expensive fares in the world.

Incidentally, Uber does not do casual pick-ups. You cannot hail a Uber down in the town. You have to pre-register and order one through an app on your smart phone.

And so now “Uberization” has become a buzz word that applies to other ideas that use the uber-style of marketing services. This, by the way, is described as “trapping a series of innovative processes, phone-enabled geo-location payments and driver management distribution, into an app-accessible service.”

A bit long-winded, but likely to be a future formula for many forms of commerce.

The latest Uber service has surfaced in New York and involves standing in a queue for a customer who simply doesn’t have the time or the inclination. In the Big Apple Robert Samuel, the founder of The Uberization of Everything.com has a team of “dudes” who wait in line for Broadway shows, sample sales, tech releases, popular nightspots and even brunch waitlists.

Samuel recently spent 48 hours outside an Apple Store waiting for the iPhone 6s for a client. He was first in line, slept in a fold-up cot for two nights, had pizza delivered to his spot and “snagged” $1000 for his trouble.

At this point in time and going forward, at the end of the day it’s not a bad way of making a living.

“No one can possibly achieve any real lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist” - John Paul Getty

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