I’m spending the week in Milan with our kind hosts at Sun Italia. They provided a training facility for both our Basic and Advanced courses and they are also hosting an OpenNMS business seminar on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the curse of the upgrade took an evil turn when, while I was upgraded to business class from JFK to MXP, my luggage didn’t arrive when I did. This is the bag with my dress shirts, my pants, and my very American “tidy whitey” briefs.
All I had with me was a pair of decent jeans and my Troy Polamalu jersey, and since I had to teach on Monday I had to go shopping.
Thus for the first time in my life find myself now decked out in Armani. Even on sale I think I spent more in one hour on clothes than I spent all of last year (since my wardrobe consists mainly of OpenNMS polos, Harley T-shirts and Levis it isn’t all that hard). I am head-to-toe stylin’.
The pants are pretty neat, I like the way they fit, and the shirt is made of cotton from plants grown by ageless monks in Tibet that is so soft I can’t cross my arms – they keep slipping off each other. The Armani T-shirt is even comfortable, although for a basic white T-shirt it cost more than I have spent on business suits (remember, I have to use US dollars). I even got a pair of those European socks that seem to come up to mid-thigh, which makes me feel like the Major from Ghost in the Shell.
But I can’t seem to get comfortable with Armani’s interpretation of the men’s brief. Let’s just say I have a lot of acreage to cover, and I’ve seen more cotton on the end of a swab than went into these undies.
Luckily my bag is currently in the same country as me, although I have no real idea when I can expect it to make it to my hotel. Shouldn’t be too long now, but it snowed all day today making the usual uncertainty with such things in Italy even more so.
I’m also pretty zoned out due to lack of sleep. Being a Pittsburgh Steeler fan I stayed up to watch the game. Wikipedia actually had the information we needed to figure out which channel to watch, but the time difference meant that it wasn’t over until after 4am.
It was weird watching the game in Italian. What was even stranger was the lack of commercials. During the traditional breaks they just showed a wide-angle shot of stadium or highlights from recent plays.
Soon it should be time for some pizza and then off to sleep. I should be better in the morning – rested and I hope adequately covered.
HA! looking slick there in your Armani. I have to say I don’t have any but what better excuse to plunk down the change for some real clothes. You should send the bill to the airline.
I was sorry to see the Steelers one (I know you lub dem) but it was one hell of a game and some spectacular playing done by Pitts.
Great action photo! Who happened to take it and why?
I can’t believe how much you paid for a t-shirt.
Regarding the wasted advertising time on Italian TV — WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!
I read that ad sales for the Superbowl were ~US$200MM for 100MM viewers. $2 per person. Math it out for the cost per commercial-exposure? According to Adweek there were 67 slots, so that’s 3 cents per slot, assuming I watch all of them. Let’s assume I watch half. So that’s 6 cents they paid for me to watch their 30-second ad.
How would this compare to online advertising?
Let’s assume that me watching most of their 30-second ad is the equivalent of me clicking on a link. A 6-cent pay-per-click is pretty damned cheap. Then again, most people don’t click on an ad unless there’s something compelling about the product. People watch the Superbowl ads to be entertained. So maybe this is a lousy comparison.
I’d do comparisons to CPM advertising but I suspect it would be even more useless, so I’ll stop now 🙂
Re: the briefs, can I say http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tmi ?
But there are worse places to be forced to go shopping!
I watched the Superbowl in Australia – it was on ESPN, which is interesting since EPSN/ABC/Disney lost the contract for the Superbowl in the US. While they did play ads, it was almost entirely non-revenue ads for other ESPN programs. I do understand the time slot is not a normally lucrative one (10am to 2pm on a Monday), but you’d think they could have sold SOMETHING. After all, many people were watching who wouldn’t normally watch TV at that hour…(don’t tell the boss!)
@loldoc – During the first quarter I thought it was going to be a blowout and by the end of the game I was sweating bullets. I don’t think the modern Steelers come close to the team that won in the late 1970s and that the last two Super Bowl wins have been more due to poor decisions by the opponent than skill on the part of the Steelers, but as a fan I’ll take it. (grin)
@marsosudiro I had David snap that picture while I was in a funny pose. And I took some artistic license with the story about the price of the T-shirt. It came to around US$28 and I really don’t think I’ve purchased a suit for that amount.
Artistic photo? Yes. Artistic license? Sheesh.
The sharpest suit I’ve ever owned was a 1955 J. Press tuxedo that I found for $25 at Chapel Hill PTA Thrift. I probably wore it close to 20 times to things it was appropriate for. Then I grew larger and grew out of going to such events. Gave the suit to a white person who is actually smaller than i and who might have use for it. I miss it sometimes, like right now when I’m (a) slimmer and (b) going to an amusing Las Vegas / Elvis night thing with a bunch of people who normally spend their time with campesinos doing migrant worker rights. So for them, dressing up is a real novelty.
My God, what a boring story. Let’s go back to the CPMs…
p.s. thanks for the review on Eagle Creek. I’m thinking about one of their big duffels (with backpack straps) for my next long trip. Which probably won’t be until 2010 but that’s OK.
Sorry T, but the Major is way hotter. You can still model the socks for all of us in Frankfurt, though.