The Big Wave Blog

1. The crushing exchange rate: Your inheritance is now lower thanks to the dinner you had with your client after landing.
2. The Nano hotel room: You don’t get a closet, you sleep in a closet.
3. The tap water: Tastes like it has been flavored with liquid bleach and baking soda.
4. The expanded vowels: British English has incorporated new vowels and sounds that others cannot be expected to understand.
5. The omnipresent ethnic food: You can’t find a single restaurant that doesn’t feature kebabs and pasta in the front window.
6. The Oyster Card: You are using it on the subway, not at Red Lobster.
7. Open containers: People on trains and buses are drinking their beer or liquor straight from the bottle, without a paper bag. You might even see a creative bunch mixing drinks on the go!
8. Potatoes have funny names: The chips are crisps and the fries are chips.
9. Smile! You’re on TV! The CCTV cameras are everywhere, and I mean everywhere!
10. You are feeling damp and hungry. “Bad food, worse weather” is no longer a joke!

It’s great to experience life in London. I enjoy seeing the British driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way home, where they sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV!

It’s always fun to laugh at our differences, but I had an awesome time in London last week. Despite the exchange rate and occasional rain shower, it is one of my favorite places to do business and also take in a museum or a show. I can only imagine what a Londoner’s Top 10 US list would look like! Maybe I’ll work on that for next time…

Has anyone noticed a correlation between Google’s increasing domination of the search market and the advent of these “special” cups?

We have seen industry thought leaders drinking from cups just like these.  I’ve seen everything from beer to soft drinks to water being consumed from these cups… so I’d have to say that the term “Kool-Aid” is metaphorical.  It’s obviously something in the interior of the cup that enters the liquid and induces us to gravitate toward Google more and more.  Market leadership couldn’t just be the result of Cup Branding. 

But just as a precaution, Microsoft and Yahoo might want to consider cup production as part of their 2008 “marketing” efforts.

Guy Kawasaki’s TOP 6 Funny Quotes
December 4, 2007

1.  “I am not your typical moderator.” – when asked why he was asking the tough questions. 
2. “You have to make love to the microphone.” – to Rahul Lahiri of Ask when he could not be heard clearly on the microphone. 
3. “Janitors in Google are millionaires so, Matt, you go first.” – to Matt Cutts of Google. (He wanted to set the order of asking questions based on the net worth of the individuals on the panel.) 
4. “It’s a Microsoft microphone!” – to Eytan Seidman of MSN Search when he complained about his microphone malfunctioning. 
5. “You are full of shit.” – to Matt Cutts on his lame definition of how Page Rank works. 
6. “Finally, something worth writing down.” – to the panel when they clarified that using – is better than using _  when naming URLs. 

Thanks, Guy, for the much needed comedy!