Thursday, January 18, 2007

Grad students aren't bad people...

Now, I know that I'm currently on hiatus from grad studenthood, but I'm still a grad student at heart. That's why, when I was recently reminded of this clip from the Simpson's, I had myself a good larf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufSZ3QBWSaw

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Back from the holidays...

So, yes, back from the holidays which I spent in Kuwait, but that's not the point of this post. I will say this though, I couldn't spit without hitting someone I knew from highschool! It was really bizarre! Got a chance to see a lot of familiar faces that I hadn't seen in years and years, so it was nice.

Anyways, on my first day back in Libya (couple days ago) a bunch of people from the team decided to go eat at the fish market. So we settled on a restaurant, Barakoda [sic], which looked a little less shabby than the one we usually go to. As we're seated and handed our menus, I notice the restaurant's slogan:

"We're not the best, but we're going ahead"

Now, two things:

1) Why would a restaurant so brazenly and forthrightly tell its customers that it is "not the best"?

2) If they know that they're not the best, then why are they still "going ahead"? ("going ahead" and serving us whatever crap they manage to churn out I suppose)

Okay, granted, the original Arabic translates better into "We're not the best, but we're on our way," but that's still a pretty bad slogan! Imagine if an airline's slogan was "We will most likely get you to the general vicinity of where you want to be." It's just not good marketing, and you don't need a consultant to tell you that.