techno.blog("Dion")

How could they do it. Watching it you felt it was going to happen… and it did.

Beckham misses a penalty, Gerrald kicks the ball in the only bad place in the park. Oh my god. This is like life as a Red Sox fan. At least we have 2 more games to catch up.

As soon as I saw The Apprentice with Donald Trump, I thought it would be a no-brainer to copy the show in the UK, using Richard Branson (Mr. Virgin).

It turns out that he has gone 1 step further and will be involved in another US reality show Branson’s Big Adventure.

On a side note, I used to know someone who worked at Virgin and he had the business title: “Chief Virgin Converter” :)

Carlos (Brasil) Villela has written up a review of his 2 weeks in England.

He is spot on with some of the generalizations. Two points:

- Indian food: He has hit this on the head. Indian food is the BEST food out there and is cheap in England (since it is on every corner ;) ). Luckily there are some (albeit few) good Indian restaurants where I have lived in the US.

- TV Licenses: I *wish* I could pay a few bucks and get NBC, CBS, etc with NO commercials. I would definitely be willing to do that. Well, I guess I would be willing to do that.. but now I have TiVo I can skip past the commercials anyway. In the US it is nuts… the amount of commercials has steadily grown and now reaches 20 mins / hour. That is just crazy.

Thanks Carlos, this has gotten me in the mood for my trip back home to the UK in March!

So, in England the bar of chocolate known in the US as “Snickers” used to be called “Marathon”. Unfortunately the name was consilidated and the name changed in the UK to “Snickers” also. I was surprised to see a commercial for “Snickers Marathon” on the telly today. How bizarre that the market has demanded such a thing! What would this new bar be called if it was still a Marathon? “Marathon squared”?

The same fate has happened to many other brands too. Opal Fruits has now become Starburst, Oil of Ulay -> Oil of Olay, etc etc.

I like differences, and we are getting fewer and fewer of them in the western world.