Megan Gale. Just to cheer me up.

Megan Gale

My Dad loves Jennifer Hawkins. He used to love Elle MacPherson and still does but he is smitten by our Jen. I keep changing the desktop on his iMac with Jen pictures to keep the love burning. I even met Jen once and I can testify that the woman is bloody impressive in real life. He is right to idolize her.

However, for me it’s Megan Gale. She is the benchmark. I am not a celebrity fan and rather dislike most celebrities but Megan is the height of perfection. I’m not sure what happened with Megan and Andy Lee but fuck…dude, you just became a placegetter in the game of life

Anyhow, this post is about nothing really. I’m not making a statement about anything just that I thought it was funny when? Jen was on TV and Dad shook his head and said “don’t you think she’s the most perfect woman ever?” I said, no, Megan Gale is. He was visibly shaken, wanted to say something in defense of his beloved but after while just said “yeah, she’s good too”. Yes she is Dad, yes she is.

Dodged a Bullet

It’s Monday and I have dodged a bullet. No cancer. Phew!

A couple of hernias and kidney stones. It seems like nothing by comparison. Still, it’s a big wake-up call to improve my health. Kidney stones! Dammit. They will probably come out. I said to my doctor that cancer sounds better and he laughed and said ‘No, after a few hours of excruciating agony you’ll be fine’. Funny bastard.

Dhamma and death row

There’s a good chance on Monday I could be handed a death sentence.

I’m not being overdramatic, it’s real. I have lately had the CT scanner cast it’s eye over my abdomen to see what’s in there. Anomalies have been found near my bowel and stomach. Nobody is saying what it is because nobody wants to use the C word till it’s a done deal. I can’t blame them, it’s the right thing to do but waiting for the decision makes you put everything on hold. My mother died of bowel cancer, her sister Val and her mother. All horribly. Mum only got to 65. She went on holidays with Dad. The Aussie dream of driving around Australia and seeing some things. They got to Cairns when it hit her. Already a kidney down from her first attack, this time it spread like…well, cancer. She complained of a persistent pain in her side. So am I. As I write it’s in my stomach. Other times in my bladder or groin. Blood tests are all good but CT isn’t. Could be a hernia. Could be stones somewhere. Given the history, could be cancer.

Plan of attack. I am pretty focused on the worst. You know, plan for the worst, hope for the best. If it is cancer and the endgame is clear then better to be prepared than to shit yourself all the time. Being Buddhist helps. I tend to focus on the basics and get my mind on the job dhamma-wise. It stills your thoughts and stops you going crazy but the dhamma requires total concentration and therefore energy. You can lapse and let depression in. It would be good if you had a personal assistant to keep you on the straight and narrow. I can’t rely on Samantha because she is trying not to think about it at all. I can’t tell anyone about it because nobody else wants to worry about it either and what happens if it’s all OK? The guys at work all know but I keep a pretty lighthearted attitude toward it at work.

If it is cancer, I will be going massively polypharmic very quickly. I plan to go out like Aldous Huxley and Robert Anton Wilson. High as a kite and tripping the light fantastic. Either that or I’ll get into my kayak and paddle into the sunset on a one-way trip to oblivion. I think about legacy as well, but the dhamma kicks in and I think of  impermanence and the pointlessness of legacy. I think of my kids and if they will be well prepared when I’m gone. Of course, I will probably be fine and if I am, I am resolved to do better to prepare them. I’m not scared by the prospect of death but the thought I have not done enough to set my kids up mentally disturbs me. I am actually pleased with my mental preparation and there’s a certain sense of triumph that almost makes me want to have this fight. Not really. I’ll let you know on Monday.

Buzzwords

My friend Geoff, (not his real name), a Terminal Supervisor in the coal and rail business, recently poured out his frustrations to me on the managerial idiocy of the Corporation he works for. Actually, he does this all the time and I have suggested to him that it might be him rather than them. He has a certain sympathy for that view but doesn’t find it helpful in any way. His current objection was to the use of corporate buzzwords that move around like viruses.

The Ad Contrarian and me.

I have no connection with the The Ad Contrarian other than read the blog and have been influenced by it. However, there have been two signal events in my professional life in the last few years that have influenced me in positive and negative ways. The first was the ADMA Forum of 2007 which blew my mind because the previous one was lame. The 2007 Forum have some amazing keynotes and was all about how the Web 2.0 world of Social Marketing was changing the way we buy, sell, think and live. I came away from the Forum pumped and ready to carry out a revolution wherever I could find a gig. Since I was a Sales Manager at Wineselectors at the time and disconnected from the Marketing team who were, and still are, disconnected from the market, my ability to impose a new regime was zero.

Out of Retail

A genius for retail.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted on this blog; a year actually. I’ve been out of retail for most of that time and haven’t looked back. Retail in Australia is a wasteland of backward thinking, uninspired leadership and business models that are primitive and inadequate. Harvey Norman, the once-were-warriors of retail, are the most intellectually bankrupt. They have succeeded in losing all the captured ground they took from the enemy and vandalized their empire with inbreeding and institutionalized imbecility. It’s a top-down catastrophe where the Emperor himself, Gerry Harvey, once the guiding hand of retail Oz-style, has personally overseen the stagnation and degeneracy of the Harvey Norman Group with mind-numbingly insane decisions. Here’s a few:

Canon Enfilade

Danger Will Robinson! Canon have fired a broadside at their competition with the new EOS 550D and it has scored a direct hit. This thing is awesome. I won’t bother you with reviews and tech, you can get this anywhere else. It’s made my job so much harder now that this model exists. At A$1800 or thereabouts, it will be near impregnable to competitors. The Nikon D90 is now at this price point and is still a worthy competitor but I just don’t think anyone coming in for the 550D will be swayed by the Nikon. They certainly won’t be swayed by the Olympus E-30 which is a great camera but dollar for dollar now completely uncompetitive. The Sony offerings are laughable anyway so you can ignore them as a threat.

Back in bed with Olympus

My Olympus rep Mark popped in to the store yesterday. I was planning to treat him like any other rep. Cordially but disinterested. Until he announced he was giving me an SLR next month. This stunned me because my new found Nikon love has really been an enjoyable experience but actively boycotting Olympus has been hard because I have a belief in their SLR range that makes me WANT to sell it. Now that the grief has been lifted, I can go back to selling what I know and love. Mark even showed me the new Pen E-EPL which is everything the E-P1 should have been.

On the weekend at my kayak club’s large gathering I even wore my Olympus shirt and extolled the virtues of Olympus to a Nikon crowd. That’s how hard some habits take hold. I hope Olympus appreciate the work I do for them even when I’m not in the shop. An SLR camera to honour a promise is not an expensive way to keep their strongest advocate happy.

A few things though. The Nikon D300s is an amazing camera. Olympus have NO response to it. The E-3 is not in the same league. Also, the Olympus compact range is, as ever, rubbish. Don’t these guys do market research. Take a look at the Sony DSC-HX5V. It is friggin’ unbelievable. The Olympus competitor is shite. Get a grip Olympus. Ditch those shitty image sensors your are using and put some Sonys in there. The image quality of my mju-6010 is woeful and the new Tough range produces the worst images in their class. Well, done on losing your toughened market share to Panasonic.

Eat shit and die Olympus!

That’s it! I mean that’s fucking IT! I fucking hate Olympus. They made a promise to give me an SLR. A FUCKING PROMISE MOTHERFUCKERS!!! It was made years ago and they have systematically failed to deliver on that promise while I have promised to promote their fucking cameras to the point of tripling their piss-weak market share in our store. I did this single-fucking-handed. Without me you douchbags you would have NOTHING! I took it from Canon and gave it to you. I did it because I was a true believer and a real fan of the cameras. Getting an SLR was just a ‘thank you Brad for a job well done’. Not getting the promised SLR is “thanks for all the sales Brad now go fuck yourself. By the way, here’s a T-shirt”.

Well shove your fucking T-shirt! I am a Nikon man now. Do you know how many Olympus SLRs I’ve sold since you shitheads reneged on your PROMISE?

NONE. Absolutely None. In fact I’ve cross-sold to Nikon. Hell, I’ve even sold some Canons. Now, I know we are not a huge store for SLR sales compared to say, Michael’s or Ted’s but on my own I sell tens of thousands in Olympus stock and all this has now disappeared because you are FUCKING reneging shitbags.

GO FUCK YOURSELVES! Nikon forever.

Olympus – love you long time.

The new PEN-IS

 

 

Ah, shit. The Olympus EP-2 is out and I have a truckload of the EP-1s to still sell with no sign of a price drop from Oly. Hmmm, the curious pleasures of retail. Anyhow, the EP-2 is a good response to Panasonic’s GF1 and if it is better than the Pen 1 (now known as the PEN-IS) then it will be an awesome bit of kit. This is Oly at it’s best. The results I’ve seen from the first one have been fantastic, especially the movie mode. As much as Olympus can be frustrating, they offer products and photography that’s slightly off-centre and I really like that. I also like the fact that the image quality is now either competitive or surpassing their competitors. I also like that it sets me apart from Canon users who are really like sheep, buying their cameras with no independent opinion or research.

“I want a Canon 450D”

“Why?”

“I’ve got a friend who’s uncle is a professional and he uses a Canon so I want one.”

“So you want a professional SLR?”

“No. I only want to spend $1000″

“You are an idiot”

That’s how it goes, day in day out. That’s what makes up Canon’s large market share; sheep. Most Olympus users I know have used them right back to OM days and they are good to talk to even if they are rare. The ones I convert to Olympus are always pleasantly surprised by how much they like their new camera and how well it shoots. They even enjoy shoving it in the faces of their Canon wielding ovine friends.

Don’t get me wrong on this, I don’t hate Canon. I take back my initial misgivings about the 7D. From all accounts, and a source I totally trust, it is a weapon of a camera. But it’s friggin’ expensive and out of reach of the average punter. Even the consumer cameras have good dynamic range but when I spend $1500 on anything I don’t want it made out of an old Airfix kit. Olympus are much better built with far superior lenses at the consumer level. I don’t need to do a full sales pitch here, it’s just that I’ve been seriously reviewing some of my brand loyalties. So far all good.