Open Day, continued
One other 'attraction' was the reader's corner - at least chances weren't too bad to find an audience here, so I jumped at the opportunity to hog a bit of limelight. How else was I supposed to get rid of the unspilled adrenaline I had accumulated in the mornings when no one showed up for our presentation?
Btw, and as usual, the next day we all received an email from the marketing manager who thanked us for making FH Open Day another unprecedented success - there is forever going to be a striking incongruence between my and her perception of events...
Cologne, pt. n
A few stray pictures from my last visit to Cologne.
Blue hour in the city.
Jessica's office (with Jessica).
This is by far the coolest double-barrelled name I've ever seen. Hopefully Mr. Kleinbillengeretsches is going to propose to Ms. Trumm soon.
Open Day, pt. 1
Saturday we had Open Day at our university - needless to say the English curricula weren't exactly sought after, this being a university of applied sciences, but at least it gave us the opportunity to do some 'pool bonding'. Here are a few glimpses of my beloved colleagues.
The BOSS
Colin
Michael
The boys, playful
Myself
Me, the consumer
There is this supermarket in Cologne by the name of "Kaufland", Shopping County. My 'It' of late-capitalism (i.e. what people in former days called the "subconscious" and blamed for all their animalic desires) is hooked on this place - this week offered the first opportunity in more than a year to go shopping in Shopping County. No frills, no thrills - but shelves 3 metres tall and yoghurt in 84 flavors. I love it. Maybe I'd like to figure out what this obsession is all about, if not one of my resolutions for this new year had been to learn to stop worrying (and love consumerism, for instance). So instead, I'll just indulge.
Follow me to the country of shopping...
Another happy customer looking for her favourite lowest price prepacked bread? Or was she maybe a retail apprentice-to-be on a work placement? She was going through this pile of bread like this for ever. Maybe it was some sort of compulsive obsessive disorder and she just _had_ to align the packages vertically and horizontally? No one knows.
The canned King:
In case you didn't know (I didn't): This chocolate spread was around before that pseudo band was... and according to the hot sheets Nu Pagadi is Russian (Ну, погоди, phonetically correct translates to: Nu, pogodi!) and means: You better watch out (na warte, in German). It was a Russian animated cartoon from the late 60s, early 70s featuring a wolf and a hare, and apparently fairly popular in the Eastern bloc countries.
Read more about this on
Wikipedia. Another interesting detail: It seems as if this is the Austrian flag appearing in the image on the product packaging (in the background, on the railing of this boat or raft or whatever).
"No, Mummy, please, not Pomps again....!?!"
Colonians will love that: The inofficial capital's emblem cast in sugar... the sweet twin towers you might want to call them...
And finally, here were are... in the land of plagiarised breakfast cereals' crazy breakfast mascots....
What an appetizing idea for a point of sale decoration!
Yummy, chicken stomach (99 cent for half a kilo!)
Food designers/photographers must enjoy working for the food & groceries industry ("Remember that day when we made this dish of glaced chicken stomach, neatly decorated with peas and parsley? Nothing but cat food, but who cares...")
And to conclude: The lucky fisherman and his catch of fish! Shopping county won't let you down:-)
the most daunting campaign in a while
I was waiting at the pharmacist today to pick up my cough medicine when this truly terrifying key visual of a cellulite lotion campaign caught my eye:
Some dickhead junior art director (2 months ago he was still a trainee; and since they cannot afford to pay him more, they promoted him to junior AD) must have had one helluva time when he made this. Check this out: It is a "Customer loyalty pass which you are supposed to keep and have stamped by your pharmacist any time you buy a new Vichy Product. I beg your pardon, Sir, buying cellulite products in itself it indignifying enough. Who would want to be subject to the speculation that your butt's skin might be anyhow near to complexion of a leather couch???
And that dickhead AD couldn't even resist the urge to come up with yet another equally daunting composition:
When I advanced in the queue, the woman behind me got to stand next to the brochure dispenser - and she seemed to be equally repulsed.
lexcial variety
today I had the opportunity to expand my lexical variety and learn about the lexical difference between blemishes, pimples and zits. reason was that I developed a major zit on my forehead, right between my eyes (which is why I have been deemed "our new colleague from India" by my lovely office mates). I think this was caused by my participating in lent: I had nothing but coleslaw soup and apples in the past four days. Anyhow: If you want to be polite, say blemish. If you can allow yourself to be descriptive, use pimple. And use zit only in your peer-group - the word itself seems to be an onomatopoetic derivation from the sound the zit makes when you pop it.
enjoy!
jana
Carnival in Cologne
Dä Jeisterzoch (the ghost parade)
in ihrefäld
diese jahr mit dem motto
Die Du-bist-Deutschland-Geisterbahn
nä?
inger weedschaft op d'r eck
och noch eens
noch mä jeister
kitty mask
from?
San Francisco!
dä ruusemuntagszoch
noch eens
de kamelle!
Migration office
is the theme and I finally managed to migrate and commute a bit at least - carnival! I caught food poisoning on the very evening that we arrived which was anything but pleasant. To be honest, and for the first time of my life, I had to puke in the tram, how embarassing is that... and it doesn't get significantly better by the fact that I used my carnival paper hat as a container for the outburst.
Only resolution to be made: I'll never ever have home made sushi again, or at least not in combination with this instant burn-your-throat wasabi powder... (but it was tasty, I swear...)
back on the blog
funny thing about blogs is that it may happen that you do no longer like what you wrote, or that you do no longer like what happened while you wrote the blog. Either option can easily lead to the urge to erase the old content and make space for something new... and here we go, on the bigger better brighter side of life (or so we hope)...
The BOSS
Colin
Michael
The boys, playful
Myself
