Cambodia - Part 3

Siem Reap wasn't a huge place, no modern glass and steel towers on the skyline but it did have quite a large number of hotels, bars and restaurants for the tourists visiting Angkor Wat. The picture above is a pano taken from our hotel room which was on the fourth floor of the building, in a suburb of the town, it was evening time when this was taken but it was still over 30 degrees.

The food and drink was a little bit more pricey in town than previously in the big cities, I guess that was because of the higher ratio of tourists to locals, it felt really expensive after our trek through Vietnam and Phnom Penh but actually it was still pretty cheap, here's a typical menu from a mid-range restaurant (prices in US Dollars)

Even though we were in the middle of Cambodia in a small town I still managed to find some craft beer! There was a little bar by the canal that runs through the centre called "Embargo" that's run by an English bloke who brews his own beer as well as stocking some of the more popular Vietnamese craft brews (like Heart of Darkness) it was a great little spot, and the beer was cold and tasty! (see picture below)

One evening we decamped (via tut-tut) to a local hall/theatre where we were treated to some local music and traditional dance, it was a very touristy affair with quite a few people, but it was enjoyable and the buffet was amazing. I snapped a few pictures (see below) everyone was impressed with the bright colours of the costumes and the extraordinary finger bending!

The night life in Siem Reap was quite vibrant but also quite seedy, lot's of balding middle aged European blokes cruising around trying to pick up Asian girls (and/or boys?). It was sad to see but inevitable I suppose when you have such a wealth gap. I do wonder though, some of the girls must be quite disappointed when they ultimately find out that the bloke they latched onto is a divorced plumber from Rochdale, still, hopefully some find what they're looking for. There's one street in the town named "Beer Street" (I'm sure it's not really called that) where all the action takes place after dark, I snapped the picture below, it looks colourful but in reality was like running a gauntlet of people trying to sell you things, we walked through it one night (on the way home from a restaurant) but didn't spend any time there.

One point of interest, the coloured cubes hanging from the overhead wires were for the local beer which was amusingly called "Krud", I guess it's an acquired taste.

We enjoyed our stay in Siem Reap and it was from there that we left for the journey home. There were two legs to it, first a flight from Siem Reap airport to Saigon and then direct from Saigon back to Heathrow, London. The airport at Siem Reap was quite a surprise, it was brand spanking new and looked fabulous, however there was no one there, completely empty. Apparently built with Chinese money in the pre-covid tourist boom it's utility has somewhat waned since then, I snapped the picture below to show the main terminal building with not a soul in sight (except my Mrs)

The flight to Saigon was short, less than an hour, and pretty soon we were back in the maelstrom that is Ho Chi Minh City airport. After spending all our left over currency on things we didn't need we went down to the departure gate and waited to be called to board. Fortunately everything was running on time and we left around Midnight on our Boing 787 back to London (see below).

Our flight landed a little early at Heathrow T4 and our bags came through quite quickly so we shuffled downstairs to the train station and hopped onto the Elizabeth line to take us home, this involved a quick change at Hayes which proved to be quite a shock to the system! It was only 7am so on the platform it was overcast, grey, freezing cold and drizzling, a rude awakening after the heat and sunshine of Asia,! Anyway, it was good to be home and we were happy to have banked so many amazing sights, smells and sounds on our travels, I wonder where we'll go next?

Hitch @75

 

Christopher Hitchens, contrarian and public intellectual, author of many books and debates on subjects that interest me would have been 75 this week (he died in 2011). In such troubled times his clarity of thought and ability to articulate complex issues is sorely missed, many of his musings on people like Putin and situations like Gaza turned out to be bang on the money.

Cobb

Stunning photo of the Cobb in Lyme Regis during a recent storm (Ciarán, Nov 2023), it's amazing what new images become possible with cheap drone technology that only a few years ago would have required a helicopter and cost thousands.

Cambodia - Part 2

 

After the horrors of Phnom Penh it was nice to get out into the countryside for a bit. Siem Reap is the location of the famous "Angkor Wat" temple complex and was the capital of ancient Cambodia from around 1150 to the 1600s. Over this long history it was attacked, sacked, rebuilt and extended many  times and there are many hundreds of ruined temples and buildings in the surrounding jungle. The picture above is the one that most people will be familiar with, it shows the main temple at sunrise, it's a magnificent structure and contains some fascinating insights into both Hinduism and Buddhism having transitioned in it's lifetime from one religion to the other, somehow managing to merge ideas from both. We visited a couple of different places while in the area but the main temple was probably the most impressive, you can't climb the towers anymore (too many visitors causing too much wear and tear) but you can wander around freely pretty much everywhere else.

The picture above shows the temple at Bayon, this is another complex at Angkor and is often called the "smiling faces" temple as it consists of many stone towers most of which have a smiling Buddha carved into the stone. This temple, built in the 12th and 13th century, looks like it's more degraded that the main Angkor Wat structure although you can still wander around most of it to look at the wall carvings and internal corridors and rooms.

We also visited the temple at Ta Prohm which is another large complex built in the early 13th century, which in its time was a centre of Buddhist learning and built entirely without mortar. This temple is mostly famous these days for being the one used in the film "Tomb Raider" and features many old silk-cotton trees whose roots, looking more reptilian than plant, are slowly penetrating the stones and breaking the temple up, see picture below.

I couldn't leave Ta Prohm without snapping a picture of the famous spot where Laura Croft did her thing, so here it is in all it's glory (below)! Although I have seen the film I couldn't remember the scene, personally I thought the place more reminiscent of the monkey palace sequence from Jungle Book!

There were some amazing structures to be seen, far too many to put here but here are a few shots that show some of the interiors of the various temple complexes.

After some sweaty excursions (the heat was fierce) to the various wonders of the Angkor temple complexes we retired to the nearest large town of Siem Reap, where we were lodging, for some refreshment and entertainment, more in part 3.

London Stories

Interesting visual effect of reflective sheeting on the walls of an underground tunnel in Bermondsey station, reminded me of the hall of mirrors at the fair..

Dallas vibes

It was very noticeable last Friday that Reading town centre is looking more and more like Dallas every day, let's hope that the locals embrace the changes as readily as the property developers seem to. The new Siren tap room should be ready in May and will be located on the ground floor of this shiny new glass and steel tower. It'll be good to have another decent independent food and drink venue to visit in town, most of the current corpus seem to be national or international chains, which range from not that interesting to truly hideous.

Boys Night..

Called up an old mate last Friday for a pint and we headed into Reading to the Nags head for a couple of scoops and a good old chin wag. Luckily the Nags had a Verdant beer on cask, called "Future You" it was a fruity West Coast pale ale at around 4.5% ABV, a completely lush session beer, so good I had two! It was a beautiful evening (for a change) and so we sat outside for a bit. After the Nags we headed over to the Castle Tap as they had a live band on (more of a practice session) which was good for an hour or so, then down to Brewdog for burgers and chips and then home on the train. A thoroughly enjoyable evening!

Cambodia - Part 1

So, having left Saigon we headed to the Cambodian border, a couple of hours by bus got us there, the heat was fierce and the border process slightly intimidating but after a payment of $25 and lots of passport stamping we got through without any issues. On the other side of the line we picked up a new bus and headed on toward Phnom Penh the capital city. It was a three hour journey to the city from the border so around half way we stopped at a roadside café and market for refreshments, the snacks were somewhat interesting, mainly insects including spiders, crickets and meal worms I snapped some pictures (see example below) in case people didn't believe me, and no I didn't try any although you could pay 10p and hold a large hairy spider (alive) for photo's, it had to be done..

When we arrived in the city we checked into our hotel and freshened up a bit, later on that evening we took a rickshaw ride around the city, it was slightly terrifying being at traffic level but we did see some interesting sights and got our bearings a bit. After the bike ride we stopped off at a river side restaurant and had some food, unbelievably the food in Cambodia was even cheaper than Vietnam we got back to the hotel at around 9pm, it was still very warm outside but luckily our room had A/C so we slept well ready for a full itinerary the next day.

Most people know about the terrible Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the killing fields (1975-79) etc. Near to Phnom Penh there are a number of sites preserved from that time including one of the killing fields and also a political prison where people were tortured and abused before they were sent to the killing field, all pretty grim but the people there seemed quite happy to show tourists around and explain the ins and outs of the whole thing, it's amazing how resilient the younger generations are in this country and how keen they are to move on and develop their economy, even if it means dredging up an unpleasant and violent history for the entertainment of ignorant tourists.

The first stop was a "killing field" (there were over 200 in the country) This is where supposed enemies of the regime were sent and killed, the one nearest to the city (in a suburb) was where some 20,000 (est) people were dispatched and the site was hidden away from sight in an old (walled) Chinese cemetery. In the middle of the site there was a large memorial building and inside that were the skulls of all the bodies exhumed from their shallow graves (see above), displayed in a rather stark and confronting way, it made you think!

These bodies were dug up in the 90s and after a while the people doing the excavating gave up, even though they knew there were many more graves. The decision was taken to let the remaining bones lie in peace and to convert the whole site into a memorial that could be visited by people (and tourists like us) As you walk around the place there are still traces of bones and clothes sticking out of the ground and there's a designated walk-way so that these remains aren't disturbed however it's apparently common for things to emerge after heavy rains, it's hard to hide the truth for too long.

Visiting the killing fields was a sobering experience and the history of how it happened very interesting, the question on everyone's lips though was why and I suspect that that will never really have a satisfactory answer. The next place was the old prison in Phnom Penh, it's a building that used to be a school and was constructed in a colonial style (probably by the French) it was another grim place, many people died here in unspeakable ways, from that whole period there were only 7 survivors left to tell the tale, four of whom were children.

The picture above shows the outside of one of the blocks (there were 5 blocks) and the picture below shows the inside, each cell was about 10ft by 5 ft and there were six prisoners to a cell.

After the prison we decamped back to the hotel for a rest and a shower, everyone was pretty quiet and it wasn't until much later that evening that people started talking about what they'd seen.

That evening we took a boat into the middle of the Mekong river (which is still huge at Phnom Penh) and watched the sunset (see above), the new glass and steel office buildings silhouetted in the heat haze. I wasn't sure what to make of this city, we'd only spent two days there and we'd seen some horrific historical sites but you couldn't help but notice the development going on, there were some huge new office complexes being built and the place had a hurried energy about it, the speed of development was epitomised by the wiring in the streets, I just had to snap the picture below, how they ever diagnose faults here I can't imagine!

We left Phnom Penh the next morning and settled in for the long ride to the ancient capital of Cambodia, Siem Reap.

Richmond

Richmond bridge looking fine in the afternoon sunshine today..

Culture and Religion

Having visited Asia recently I've been thinking about the slippery idea of "culture", here are some thoughts on the matter.

Clearly the culture in places like Vietnam and Cambodia is different from the culture here in the UK although it's not difficult to see the similarities and overlaps, in fact when you interact with "normal people" these differences evaporate pretty quickly, particularly when faced with day to day human survival issues such as crossing the road or acquiring food and water. Thinking about this ephemeral thing we call culture naturally leads one to ponder the nature of our own culture, what is it, how would we describe it and what is it's purpose?

Many people would invoke religion at this point, i.e. we live in a "Christian culture", even uber atheist Richard Dawkins claims that he's a "cultural Christian" What he means by this is that his culture, i.e. the one that raised him, has been largely shaped by Christian dogmas and although he "doesn't believe a word of Christian claims" he still likes singing hymns, the architecture of medieval cathedrals and the emphasis of tolerance and liberalism in the modern Christian zeitgeist (as opposed to past horrors and atrocities). Of course things like art and music, i.e. the aesthetic side of culture are our attempts to represent the existential side of culture, for example in pre-history when culture was simply hunting and gathering then our aesthetic preoccupation was to paint the prey animals we hunted on cave walls.

So what is culture and how is it different from religion?

Culture seems to be the hard interface between existential and survival practices diversified by geographical separation (i.e. environment), i.e. how we organise our societies to do critical things like reproduce, build shelters, provide food, fight, wash, fashion clothes and so on. Religion on the other hand seems to be a mash up of the attempt to codify an existing culture, also with the added layer of human imagination of things "unseen" which add another (superfluous) layer to our real-world survival practices. Religion seems to attempt to provide supernatural reasons for natural, cultural practices. For example, we kill animals and eat their meat but religion might add that you mustn't eat meat on Fridays, only fish, because this makes "god" happy. Edicts like this have no survival value but give religion (and more importantly clergy) power over ordinary people's lives and therefore access to valuable resources. It also makes social primates like us feel warm and fuzzy, i.e. that we belong to and are valued by the tribe, however at the base of things religion simply brings artificial compulsion to culture rather than being a necessary part of it.

The evolutionary benefit of culture, and also religion, is obviously therefore to do with group cohesion, it's more likely any individual will survive better if the group stick together and collaborate in acting out survival tasks (especially conflict with other groups over resources) We even see this rule in many animal species, for example birds flock, wildebeest herd, insects swarm and fish shoal to increase the survival chances of the individual. Geography plays a critical part in this, the obvious fact is that culture changes over time as we learn better survival practices, communities that have no contact with each other diverge in their survival practices and therefore in their cultures too. Cultures also feels evolutionary pressure from the imaginary layer of religion, which causes divergence between geographically separate groups as it moulds itself over pre-existing religions and unforeseen survival pressures in parts of the world that are remote from the source of the religion. You can see this in Buddhism as it morphs from Myanmar through Thailand and Cambodia and up to Japan (many differing survival pressures across these differing geographical environments)

I think it's useful to separate religion from culture and the inability to do this seems to me to be a frequent source of conflict. It's valuable to understand pure culture, i.e. food, language, survival tasks, aesthetics etc. when you find yourself in the geographical location where that culture has evolved. Usually it makes obvious sense to eat foods that are easy to obtain, communicate using the local languages and to take heed of effective ways to avoid getting stung, bitten or otherwise consumed by local predators. The religion bit doesn't really add anything useful to this other than for intellectual curiosity. Understanding which fruits can be eaten and taste good in the Cambodian jungle enables better survival in that place, but understanding that the people there believe that they can commune with their ancestors using a stone shrine draped in colourful silk is of no practical use unless those same people are going to harm the unbeliever for not believing the same. Unfortunately violence is the main vector that religions use to spread and gain power (it's always been about having more subscribers than your competitors!) and this fact has served to blur the distinction between culture and religion over many centuries.

There are many thought experiments that we could do to clarify this distinction between culture and religion, for example do we think that there would be the same conflict and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians if those two groups were both atheistic. Their cultures would clearly be so similar, i.e. essentially Mediterranean, with food, cooking, language, clothing all evolving from similar roots. It's only the imaginary religious layers that are radically different (precipitated and perpetuated by ancient wars between geographically separated tribes, Europeans, Jews and Arabs).

On the one hand I'm pessimistic about our inability to separate culture from religion, especially in the Middle East, it seems as though the centuries of indoctrination that the people there have had into the Islamic cult has managed to blur the distinction to such an extent that people there find it impossible to accept that there's a difference. How much better things would be if the people that live in that part of the world recognised that they possess (or could) the same culture and have much more in common that is different. On the other hand I am optimistic, I witnessed in Vietnam and Cambodia the effect of technology in bringing people together, i.e. providing a common cultural stake in the ground. The cultural quanta of using WhatsApp (other social media platforms are available) to communicate is consistent the world over and the instant translation of different languages smooths out many potential misunderstandings and facilitates productive collaboration. Let's hope that the forces of cultural unity can evolve dominance quicker than the forces of cultural division, it seems to be going in the wrong direction currently.

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo pointing out one of the main pillars of religious "faith" i.e. that evidence is not required to believe (in fact it's positively avoided)..

Mango Soup

Tried one of these last weekend, it's a new beer from the holy union of Verdant (Cornwall) and Green Cheek (California) It's the second iteration of their "Cheeky DIPA", I tried the first one last year while on holiday in Falmouth, Cornwall. Suffice to say that this one is easily up to scratch with that! It seems that pretty much everything Verdant do these days is excellent, or maybe that's confirmation bias at work, who knows, anyway this one's a banger in my humble. Thick, mangos, citrus, peachy and dank, the flavour saturation here is amazing (I mean just look at it!). It weighs in at 8.4% ABV so a serious drink, perhaps not one for the feint hearted, a DIPA for Verdant fan boys, excellent work!

Benchmarks

My benchmark for spring, I take a picture of this little tree every year and compare with past years, this picture was taken on the 8th of April and is on a par with the 13th of April taken last year (the tree has had a haircut since then!). What does this mean, I've no idea, but hopefully the Summer won't be a wash out like last year!

Tuesday Titter

Meanwhile, in Scotland..

Beer Trivia

When you drink a pint of Guinness there's a tradition that you should take enough of a sup from a full pint to "split the G", of course this assumes you're drinking from a proper Guinness glass, but if you are then there's a logo on the glass spelling out the name and that's the G that needs to be split. I reckon it's roughly 3 swallows (depending on your size, i.e. probably more for Women) It's a good game and ultimately leads to drinking more Guinness, which is the whole point I suspect..

London Stories

We spent the day in London yesterday, our Daughter was running her first half marathon (The London Landmarks Half Marathon) and we wanted to cheer her on. It was a fun day, sunny and windy ideal conditions for running! We enjoyed walking from place to place (testing my knowledge of London streets!) to watch the runners weave their way through the ancient and narrow roads of the city. While waiting opposite Cannon Street station, at the 8 mile mark, I noticed the "Forgotten Streams" sculpture which traces the path of one of London's "lost rivers" the Walbrook, so I snapped a picture of it (above).

In Anglo Saxon times this ancient stream used to bisect the city into two hills, Cornhill to the East and Ludgate Hill to the West and is famous for the large number of human skulls discovered in it's sediments during the construction of a new sewer in 1838. Historians have several theories about where these skulls came from, perhaps as a result of the Carausian Revolt in AD 286 or the rebellion of Boudica, or even the ritual deposits of a Celtic cult, anyway it's odd that very few bones other than skulls have been found here.

In the end our day was a great success, our Daughter finished the race in style clocking a time of just a tad over two hours, pretty decent for a first effort I thought! Later in the afternoon we decamped to Ladbrook Grove for a slap up meal in the Pelican pub (see below) to celebrate. The food was great, to start we had a mixture of dishes to share, and then for a main dish I opted for their Chicken and Ham pie which was a delight with cauliflower cheese, gravy and chips.

Saigon, again part III

We also visited the Mekong delta, it's only a short drive from the City and being one of the largest rivers in the world its delta is pretty impressive and has many huge islands (some the size of UK counties). Being in the middle of such a large river and having a rainy season that reliably floods the entire place, the soil here is amazing and regularly gets replenished by the silt from the river. It's the ideal place to grow fruit and veg, and that's exactly what the people who live here do. 

After a quick boat trip across the river to one of these islands, we stopped at a little tourist place offering samples of some of the fruits grown here (see above), there were the usual suspects like mango and pineapple but also several that I'd never tried in the flesh, like Jackfruit and some peach like things that I can't remember the name of. The little bowl in the middle is full of chili, you're supposed to dip your fruit into it before eating, I'd never done that before and it was surprisingly good, the contrast of sweet and hot worked well!

Another local delicacy was the "Elephant Ear Fish" a native species of the Mekong. I'd never heard of it before and was somewhat skeptical, anyway, one of our gang ordered one at a restaurant on the island and we waited in anticipation. The pictures below show the before and after deep fat frying, although clearly the one we ate wasn't a large as the fresh one in the top picture..

It was surprisingly good, I guess the strong currents in the mighty Mekong mean that this fish has to swim hard to survive and feed, its meat was a bit like monk fish, i.e. firm, but with a more delicate flavour like trout.

Later in the evening we took a stroll around the city centre, here's a photo of the famous building from where the last "chopper" out of Saigon took off from. You can clearly see the flat roofed tower at the top that featured in that famous footage taken in 1975 at the end of the war. Today it's rather dwarfed by much taller and more modern buildings but it's always nice to see these places in the flesh!

We finished off our last night in Saigon with a cheeky beer at the Da Nang based 7 Bridges taproom, the same brewery that we'd come to love from Hoi An. Below is a picture of their impressive tap wall, although we couldn't resist the "Dragon IPA" again!

I was a bit sad leaving Saigon and although it was (in places) a busy, dirty, noisy place it had that positive energy some cities have and certainly a lot to offer the culture vulture and craft beer fan. Anyway we packed our bags and readied ourselves for the next leg of the trip, up river and to the border! Cambodia beaconed.

Saigon, again part II

 

One of the days in Saigon we took a trip to the Cu Chi tunnel complex which is roughly 25km from the city. Although I'd read about these tunnels and seen documentaries on them, I hadn't realised that they were so close to such an important Southern City (i.e. their capital!) No wonder the Americans expended so much effort (unsuccessfully) to try to find and eliminate them with carpet bombing and offensives involving 30,000 troops and specialist Australian engineers dubbed "Tunnel Rats". In addition to the tunnel systems dug to hide the VC soldiers there were a myriad of nasty traps designed, mostly, to maim rather than kill, thereby inflicting a huge burden on the attacking force. Pictured above is one such trap, just a simple swing trap with sharpened bamboo spike at the bottom, falling into one of these doesn't bear thinking about and BTW the spikes were smeared with excrement just to ensure wounds became infected.

We entered the tunnels themselves, a brief 10 minute scramble through a very tiny section, it was difficult to take pictures, in fact it was difficult to breath properly but I managed to snap a couple (see example below)

It doesn't look like much but now imagine, trying to run while doubled over in the pitch black, 45 degrees Centigrade and humid as hell with thin air and B52 bombers raging above, not my idea of fun, it's hard not to have a deep respect for the people that endured these conditions.

One of the tourist things you can do at the tunnel complex is to fire (on a firing range) either an AK47 or an M16 rifle/machine gun, for the princely sum of £10 you get one clip of ammo and away you go. I couldn't resist. Now I've shot many times before but only shot guns, I'd had no experience of automatic weapons, it was interesting to say the least (and very loud!) I have no pictures of the experience as it was a boiling hot day and the rest of my team made a b-line for the ice cream shop rather than hang around waiting for me, can't blame them I suppose, anyway it'll be a lasting memory for me!

More Saigon sights in part III

Saigon, again part I..

Many people will remember the images of the Buddhist monk who immolated himself in Saigon in 1963, there's ample footage of it out there and his image was immortalised on, of all places, an album cover by the band "Rage Against the Machine" (see picture below), I guess as being a fine example of sticking it to the man! In Saigon there's a memorial sculpture to him at the spot where it happened (see picture above) The back story is fascinating, a story of corruption, state interference with freedom of conscience and ultimately the power of protest as a vector for change. While in the city of Hue we saw the car that he travelled in on that fateful day (picture here), seeing this shrine kind of squared the circle, it was a very sad and poignant story.

According to all the guide books there are a couple of major things for tourists to see and do in Saigon (and a million minor ones), these include the Cu Chi tunnels, the Mekong delta and various architectural points of interest like the Opera House, various museums, the post office and a cluster of French colonial buildings that served as Government installations over the years. Personally I added a couple to this list, the beer culture in Saigon is huge and not wanting to miss out on an important cultural experience I earmarked a couple of breweries and taprooms and added them to our list, not least of which was "The Heart of Darkness" (previously mentioned here).

A kind bar tender took this snap of our little gang after an evening visit  to the HoD taproom in the heart of Saigon, it was a cool spot, the vibe was great, people friendly and the beers absolutely banging, although I do confess, when it's 38C and 100% humid most cold drinks are good! (no, these beers were world class!)

Now onto more classic tourist trail things..

Plenty of military hardware that the Americans abandoned still on show in the city, the War Remnants Museum is well worth a visit, although I found it a little one sided (I guess the victors write history etc.) Generally though the exhibits are interesting and well organised, I particularly liked the photographs, many I'd never seen before and this was one of the first wars to be covered extensively by photo-journalists and perhaps one of the best (most honestly) recorded.

In the city itself there were many Communist weapons stashes, hidden away under cafes and houses in purpose built cellars almost undetectable, I hadn't realised that the Communists had infiltrated the South so comprehensively, for all their might the Americans really didn't stand a chance. In this picture we see my Wife emerging from one of the underground stores, the only entrance was in the doorway of a popular café just over the road from several Government buildings, many American soldiers and CIA men must have walked these tiles to get their espresso and pan au chocolate in the morning, completely oblivious to the fact that there were 1000 enemy AK47 rifles hidden just  a couple of metres beneath their feet.

There's a lot more to Saigon, see what came next in part II

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out the obvious (as usual) - all those other religions, they're obviously wrong, but mine, no, mine is true..

Feeling Old

Almost exactly 48 years ago this album was released into the world, my 14 year old self loved it and played it to death, still do, but boy does that fact make me feel old!

Scalable

Many people with start-up ideas misunderstand or simply miss the concept of "scaling" a business and still making a profit, if it costs you a dollar to sell a dollar of product then you have a problem that can only be tolerated for a short period of time. The only time you can ignore this is when your product is your customers/users (like social media) and you sell something else (like advertising), even then scale only comes with more users (i.e. you still have to get new people to use your product).

Perfect Pairing

I was lucky enough to try one of these beauties over the long weekend, it's a collaboration between two of my favourite breweries, Siren and Verdant (long overdue!) and is a hazy IPA called "Leapling". Back in February the head brewer from Verdant in Cornwall paid a visit to sunny Berkshire and dropped in on Siren central to make a collaboration beer and also give a little talk on Verdant and also to showcase their "Puttty" offering, I blogged about it at the time. Leapling is the result and it's a banger. The beer definitely occupies the middle ground between the two house styles, it has the soft pillowy mouthfeel of Verdant and the spiky vibe of Siren, the flavours are a classic combo of US and NZ hops, mango with a little gooseberry with little or no bitterness to speak of, a lovely beer. A side note, it's called "Leapling" because it was conceived on the 29th February (of course)..

Monday Lunch

Spent Easter Monday over in deepest Surrey visiting my mum who lives near Frensham Pond. We were lucky with the showery weather and managed a 5k walk through the woods and around the lake without a spot of rain, the only impediment was the sudden hatching of millions of midges on the way home (no sign of them on the way out) Fortunately they didn't seem to be the biting kind and we made it back with nothing more than a slightly itchy feeling in our scalps..