America is a truly wonderful place. As we flew into Washington DC I was, as
usual, flabbergasted by the range of services and utilities available to the
discerning and not-so-discerning consumer.
In a society which has taken the Victorian concept of entrepreneurism to
unimaginable heights, business opportunities for manufacturing and/or services
to make one’s life easier abound. If one
wanted to set up a booth in an airport wherein one could have one’s nose-hairs
trimmed before that all-important business meeting, they would make a space
available. One almost gets the feeling
that anything that happens which irritates is not seen as an annoyance but as an
opportunity to invent something to ensure that whatever it was doesn’t happen
to anyone else.
Upon arrival at our hotel, therefore, and checking into our room, I was suddenly struck by something which, in Houston, I had presumed to be a local foible but which turns out to be endemic to the country: no shower gel. Compared to the usual Holiday Inn Express on the M4 corridor near Slough, of course, the bathroom is the very lap of luxury and conspicuous consumption. There are shoe-cleaning kits, cotton buds, sewing kits, mouthwash, numerous sizes of bars of soap, body lotion, hand lotion, eyewash, exfoliants and make-up remover. But no shower gel.
Is there a reason for this? Was a laboratory mouse washed for sixty days continually with shower gel and then developed a tumour leading to the immediate Federal banning of the product? Is shower gel the property of a cartel that has overpriced the licence to manufacture? Given that Americans shower more than the rest of the world put together, what can explain this absence of the most important invention since the espresso machine?
Perhaps more importantly, is this an opportunity which the US business school professors have missed? Should the School of Management & Business at Aber be fast-tracking a new course in liquid soap manufacturing? If someone does crack this market, does this blog serve as a patent-pending on the idea?
But I digress ... as usual. Far more important than chasing a bar of soap round the shower cubicle (as I don’t have fingers this is more difficult than might first appear) was the arrival in DC of the Vice Chancellor, Prof April McMahon. Given the circumstances – two powerful women sharing the same stage – we got on famously. An eminent linguistics professor, April learnt Welsh in the three months between her appointment and arrival and we were able to natter away to each other without Julian, a fey Saesneg who has enough trouble making himself understood in English, being able to follow the conversation.
Our alumni event took place at the offices of the Promontory
Group in central Washington, thanks once again to the generosity of Debra Cope. The assembled throng hung on every word of
the VC in DC as she spoke about the changes taking place at Aber and, most
excitingly, of the plans for the future of Old College. As so often happens, the event overran by
nearly an hour and only the arrival of security and the imminent threat of
overtime for the cleaning staff brought the evening to a close.
Upon arrival at our hotel, therefore, and checking into our room, I was suddenly struck by something which, in Houston, I had presumed to be a local foible but which turns out to be endemic to the country: no shower gel. Compared to the usual Holiday Inn Express on the M4 corridor near Slough, of course, the bathroom is the very lap of luxury and conspicuous consumption. There are shoe-cleaning kits, cotton buds, sewing kits, mouthwash, numerous sizes of bars of soap, body lotion, hand lotion, eyewash, exfoliants and make-up remover. But no shower gel.
Is there a reason for this? Was a laboratory mouse washed for sixty days continually with shower gel and then developed a tumour leading to the immediate Federal banning of the product? Is shower gel the property of a cartel that has overpriced the licence to manufacture? Given that Americans shower more than the rest of the world put together, what can explain this absence of the most important invention since the espresso machine?
Perhaps more importantly, is this an opportunity which the US business school professors have missed? Should the School of Management & Business at Aber be fast-tracking a new course in liquid soap manufacturing? If someone does crack this market, does this blog serve as a patent-pending on the idea?
But I digress ... as usual. Far more important than chasing a bar of soap round the shower cubicle (as I don’t have fingers this is more difficult than might first appear) was the arrival in DC of the Vice Chancellor, Prof April McMahon. Given the circumstances – two powerful women sharing the same stage – we got on famously. An eminent linguistics professor, April learnt Welsh in the three months between her appointment and arrival and we were able to natter away to each other without Julian, a fey Saesneg who has enough trouble making himself understood in English, being able to follow the conversation.
Now it’s off to the Big Apple. The VC and her team have an impossible
schedule as they visit current and potential institutional partners all over
the north-east as well as attend our alumni events. In comparison, we have it easy as all of Julian’s
meetings are in the major conurbations.
The downside is that the tiny commuter aircraft flying between DC and
NYC (think: flying pencil) always give me the heebie-jeebies.
No comments:
Post a Comment