A Fat Purple Fig

It is hot.

Vaping is a big thing here. There are vape shops, stores, bars, depots and lounges. Yes…vape lounges. And there is the resultant “cautionary tale” advertising.

People like to water their lawns. Sprinklers or hand-held hoses…it doesn’t matter which.

There is an obsession with Black Friday. Back-to-back advertising, news segments and interviews with shoppers before, during and after purchasing. The challenging interviewing gig is with the shoppers about to enter the store, because nobody wants to stop and talk. The plumb post-shop interviewee had camped for FOUR nights at the front of a line of tents, in order to buy a large television, a game console and some earphones. Everyone seemed terribly happy about this.

There is an obsession with shopping in general. Advertising here isn’t of the subtle kind, that sneakily attempts to manipulate you into wanting to own something. It literally shows people holding items and saying “I bought this and it makes me happy”…or similar.

The light switches flick down for ‘on’.

The power points don’t have switches. This makes me feel like electricity is constantly buzzing around in there, at the ready.

Three out of four days/nights of four, we have walked past confident pot smokers on the street.

Despite the huge population, the police do just seem to shoot people. We watched a low-key news segment about the shooting of a shoplifter. It was low-key because the main story was about a more significant shooting, of which they had footage.

Medical advertising is weirdly unsettling. They have to read out every possible side effect as part of the deal, but they don’t achieve this with a rapid-speak addition at the end – they just say it all in the palatable advertising voice, as though it’s really no big deal. A sample script goes something like this:

“Some people try to beat diabetes using diet and exercise. But you can assist this process by taking ‘Symbioteron’. Notify your doctor if you have turberculosis, or if you suffer from repeated infections or a weakened liver. Symbioteron could cause pulmonosis, cardiac irregularity, failed liver function, an inability to breathe, hives, rash, bleeding from the nose and mouth…etc, etc”.

It’s mind-blowing.