frauke at large

In the spirit of academically sound research (and trust me … this is rigorous research indeed; in fact we should get funded for this) and therefore the necessity for a well balanced argument, I must note that although Chinese signs are always a great source of amusement and hence provide hours of laughter … we (i.e. those who should know better) don’t always get it right either. After trawling through stacks of pictures from my various visits to far away places last year, I found some more highly amusing stuff that I had almost forgotten about. There’s ‘Pratt street‘, which we found right around the corner from ‘Strange street‘ (and then, on top of that, they manage to miss-spell Paris. Ha!) … We also have something that’s literally ‘Just Rubbish’, plus a sign for the people who, apparently, know how to put the fun into horse riding. Hmmm …

Last but certainly not least … as New Zealand is filled with cows and therefore must be an extremely lonely place at night … for farmers and other strange folk … we have ‘Cow talk‘ – Wed and Fri at 6.40am … for all the lonely hearts out there … I must say: I am slightly worried as to what we might have found, had we given it a try: ‘cow therapy’, i.e. a cow on a shrink’s sofa? Or a crazy guy reading bed time stories to cows? Or perhaps even more worrying: a Jerry Springer style cow chat show …

If anyone ever had the chance to or was contemplating moving to China – I’d say: do it! It has such entertainment value. If you’re lucky, every day can be a mini adventure – or perhaps it’s just me!? No seriously – no other country I’ve visited or lived in, so far, has been as diverting as China. Take today for example. We were innocently wandering the streets of Ningbo trying to find a quiet place to work at (the perks of the job) when, without any warning, these signs suddenly appeared before us, all nicely arranged in a row, one after the other … Hysterical laughter followed … (for extra points – can you spot the non hysterical originals?):

I tried to find originals for all the fake signs, as comparisons, but got distracted by other equally comical brand names whilst doing so. Such as for example ‘Lui Chantant’ or ‘Singing Lui’ for those french speakers among you, and an anagram of Crocodile or of what might come out as Crocodile if you pronounced it in a chinese fashion.

Now if that’s not reason enough to come and explore this place, I don’t know what is! That much entertainment in one day … phew!

Our last few days in New Zealand were spent in Auckland … though we needed to travel through quite a few cow pastures and sheep fields before arriving back in civilization. Stopped off to have lunch at a black sandy beach with huge amounts of lava stones and drift wood. Took a few with me for my stone collection, as well as a bit of drift wood for the stumpery in our garden at home. Black beaches are very cool indeed.

On my way back from Australia, I took a short detour via the North Island – New Zealand. My anticipation for this place was huge as I am a big fan of ferns and particularly of tree ferns, which originate from New Zealand.

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Not quite sure where to start on this one: shall we dive in straight at the deep end and comment on the clear marketing campaign copy by The Australian: ‘Think. Again.‘, which is as similar as Apple’s ‘Think. Different.‘ campaign as similar can get (same punctuation, same font and … well almost the same words)? Or shall we comment on the funny word play in a crackers ad, that is so irritatingly good that I had to take a picture of it? Or shall we perhaps bring out the big guns and start a privacy rant over the fact that half of Melbourne is monitored to promote a ’safe city’ whilst clearly annoying some of us privacy fanatics by infringing on our rights to shop without being monitored doing so?

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Spent last week at the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Marketing conference in Melbourne, which was great. Had not been back to Melbourne for ages and found that not much had changed but that I liked it a lot more than when I was first there. Discovered many nice restaurants, bars and cafes. Particularly enjoyed the many alley bars and small restaurants by the waterfront, which, due to it being summer down under, allowed for many a warm night outside by the water. Also discovered a nice rooftop bar with beautiful night views over the city.

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Could this be quirky packaging or simply a clever new marketing ploy to get young people into the habit of carrying cigarette packets around with them, in the hope that one day they will switch from sweets to cigarettes?

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What is it with this country and the constant noise!? It starts just after dawn, when the building site next to the campus resumes work – at 5.45am!

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There’s nothing this country can do better than put on a big show. And similarly, there’s nothing it lacks more than to be able to create ‘atmosphere’. Restaurants, on the whole, consist of big square rooms that are usually fitted with huge big neon lights on the ceiling to scare away – well almost anything. Transactions of all sorts are, by and large, functional and even the weather in Ningbo switches from summer to winter and back to summer almost over night, leaving little room for the gradual change of nature that makes autumn and spring so attractive (like the smells of roasted chestnuts, decaying autumn leaves and the air getting colder). And so the notion of ‘atmosphere’, as we would know it in the West, is often entirely non-existent and lost on your average local person.

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I could also have called it: lost in translation – big time! Anyway, something funny went on, when the signs below were designed.

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