Our Flame-Grilled Economy

The latest Big Mac index is out, and apparently the Singapore dollar is undervalued, which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s recently tried to travel outside the region with it.
If you’ve just been doing little budget airline hops then it’s not a problem, because Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and China are [...]

Baz Luhrmann Suggests Focusing On The Important Stuff

When’s the right time to push away all that daily life we go through? The inconsequential, subsistence-level stuff that in the bigger scheme of things is possibly pointless.
Baz Luhrmann’s new Tourism Australia ads, Billabong and Boab do a fantastic job of asking you whether that that time is now.
His film, Australia, hasn’t opened here in [...]

Darwin’s Theory Of Payphone Evolution

It seems rumours of the death of payphones have been greatly exaggerated.

Australia

Hong Kong
pics by creativespark

Top Visual Artists In Asia Pacific?

Online voting starts today for the Signature Art Prize 2008, with entries from 12 countries, so pop in, check them out and give one a click. They’ll be on display at SAM from 10th October to 18th November.
The criteria for nomination was:

Strength of the idea and concept
Creative and interesting use of medium and material
Technique, [...]

Lazy Blogging

Crikey! I just climbed out from under my rock and realised I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died… You would not believe how tidy my house now is. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.
I am overwhelmed with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, watching Dexter, just [...]

The Voice Of God

In television land, The Voice of God is that off-screen host you never see (Janet Housewife, come on down! You’re the next contestant…). No offense fundamentalists, I’m not making this up.
This past semester I’ve popped up (or reached down, as the case may be) as The Voice of God for a class of [...]

Please Do Your Environment Action At Home In Your Own Litter Box

I think all of us at one point had the school lesson about how altering one thing in a given environment could have unforeseen and perhaps terrible results.
The classic example they use in Australia is the Cane Toad. It was introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control the native Cane Beetle, which was doing nasty [...]

Will You Still Love Your Tattoo When You’re Sober?

I’m a well brought up boy and my mother taught me at an early age not to laugh at other people’s misfortunes.
I’m the guy who was trying to impress a client a couple of years ago and managed to be drinking water and laughing at the same time, causing water to go spraying across the [...]

Like A Virgin (Sued For The Very First Time)

A couple of months ago I wrote about feeling concerned that a Virgin Mobile campaign using Flickr images was pushing the boundaries of sharing a bit. Texas teenager Alison Chang thinks so too. She’s suing for grief and humiliation. The ad, “Dump Your Pen Friend” is here, along with a lot of discussion, including some [...]

Sharing Is Caring

I changed my Creative Commons license today because an ad campaign by Virgin Mobile in Australia has been bugging me. It’s not that I don’t like the “Are You With Us or What?” stuff. It’s clever and the website is a really fun vox-pop that’s hard to stop clicking. It’s actually a site that’s worth [...]