What on Earth!

This animated short proposes what many earthlings have long feared – that the automobile has inherited the planet. When life on Earth is portrayed as one long, unending conga-line of cars, a crew of extra-terrestrial visitors understandably assume they are the dominant race. While humans, on the other hand, are merely parasites. An Oscar® nominee, this film serves as an entertaining case study.

The car of tomorrow

Little Britain - Computer says no

At the bank




At the travel agent's




At the hospital reception

Not There Yet

A short animated film about the Irish transport system. Anyone who has ever been a commuter should totally get this.

50 Things to do Before You Die

At number one on the top 50 list of Things To Do Before You Die is swimming with Dolphins, and Gaby Logan travels to an animal sanctuary to try it out for herself.

Gaby Logan gives a married couple a trip on the Orient Express from Venice to London. The British public voted this luxury train journey into the top 50 Things To Do Before You Die.

Whether you scuba dive in it, helicopter over it, or view it from the shore, all 50 Places voters seem to rate the Great Barrier Reef as one of the most vibrant, impressive and most of all colourful places on Earth.

The British public also voted to travel to Borneo to spend some time with one of the world's most endangered species - the Orangutan.


The British public voted Huskie Sledding the most fun you can have when wearing a lot of clothes. It's number 38 on the list of 50 Things To Do Before You Die

Michael Palin covered by sucking leeches!

Miichael Palin experiments with a traditional Russian health therapy in Estonian capital Tallinn by allowing a doctor to cover him in sucking leeches. Fascinating video that is definitely not for the faint hearted! Taken from BBC travel documentary, Palin's New Europe.

Traffic - Public Information Films

Signs


Pelican crossing


Motorway

The best job in the world

JANUARY 2009

WONG:
Depressed about the global economy, unemployed, or just looking for adventure? Then look no further because a tiny Australian island is offering a dream job, advertising globally to find the right person.
STORY:
Australian tourism officials are looking for a caretaker for the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.
[Anthony Hayes, CEO Queensland Tourism]:
"This really is the best job in the world. It is a six month contract when you live in this beautiful luxury house, it is probably four or five million dollar house, right on the edge of Hamilton island looking out of the Pacific. We'll pay you 150,000 Australian dollars which is roughly 75,000 Euros for the six month contract and your job in a nutshell is to travel through out the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, experiencing everything that the islands have to offer."
The caretaker will spend six months visiting Hamilton Island promoting tourism through a video blog.
Duties include feeding ocean fish, cleaning a pool and collecting deliveries of mail that arrive by plane.
But the employee is also required to go scuba diving, snorkeling and hiking and to enjoy at least 25 nearby island resorts.
No skills or experience are required for the job that starts in July and there is no age requirement.
Queensland created the job as an antidote to the global economic slump and is advertising in 18 countries including the United States and China.
[Anthony Hayes, CEO Queensland Tourism]:
"I suspect the biggest catch is going to be trying to get rid of them after six months. I suspect somebody will want to stay forever. It is obviously a bit of fun but there is a serious side to it. I think we in the tourism industry are in for a fairly difficult twelve months ahead not just in Australia but worldwide the tourism industry is in for a difficult time. Our role is to try help our industry overcome the difficulties of the next 12 months, protect jobs."
Applicants must submit a one-minute video expressing interest in the Great Barrier Reef, a vast coral reef system that is classed as one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
The campaign has already drawn more than 200 visitors to its website.
Applications are open until the end of February.

APRIL 2009

The selection process for The Best Job in the World is winding down. 16 candidates remain, but only one of them will become the representative for Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
With beautiful turquoise waters and white sandy beaches, Australias Great Barrier Reef attracts thousands of tourists every year.
Earlier this year The Best Job in the World was launched. The role is to be an island caretaker with a six-figure salary for six months of work.
34-thousand applicants applied for the job via YouTube, and now its down to just 16 lucky finalists. They come from places like Japan, Canada, China and even Australia.
The job received so much interest that the company's website initially crashed.
Officials say "The Best Job in the World" has generated publicity worth over a hundred-million dollars.
Tourism Queensland says it's just as important to get the right person for the job as getting publicity for the area.
[Anthony Hayes, CEO, Tourism QLD]:
"It has been strict all the way through and we have been paranoid about making sure that we have been fare and equitable with everyone who has applied. Thirty-four and a half thousand people sent us a one minute to start with so we needed to be really clean and careful to make sure that we treat everyone equally.
The winner, whoever he or she may be, will be announced in May.

MAY 2009

A winner has been announced in the best job in the world competition. Let's go to Queensland to find out the result.
[Anna Bligh, Queensland Premier]:
"From the United Kingdom, Ben Southall."
After an innovative marketing campaign by Tourism Queensland, 34-year-old Briton, Ben Southall was picked from 16 finalists in a highly publicized contest for 'the best job in the world'.
[Ben Southhall, Best Job in the World Winner]:
"I hope I can fill the boots as much as everybody is expecting, my swimming hopefully is up to standard and I look forward to all of the new roles and the responsibilities that the task involves."
Tourism Queensland hailed the advertising campaign as an enormous success, saying they managed to get $110 million worth of publicity for $1.7 million spent.
The campaign attracted nearly 34,700 video entries from almost 200 countries and surpassed all expectations in promoting tourism in the Australian state.
The job description? To explore the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months and report back to Tourism Queensland and the world via blogs, a photo diary, video updates and interviews.
Also, if you feel like it, feed the fish, collect the mail and clean the pool - for $110,000.
Southall said he was looking forward to the job and he will be joined by his Canadian girlfriend soon.
The campaign highlighted the marketing potential of websites such as YouTube and Facebook.
Marketing experts say the announcement of the winner, who starts work on July 1, will not end the publicity.

Trolleybuses and double deckers in A Coruña

"The Q1's in Spain", a documentary by The London Trolleybus Preservation Society.

The first plans for the installation of a trolleybus system in this Galician city date from 1940, but the first trolleybuses, eight Hispano-Suizos, weren’t ordered before 1944, and the final opening of the first line, Pl. Pontevedra – Juán Flórez – Monelos, took place on July 26th 1948. The Hispano-Suizos were followed by several other series of trolleybuses: Vetras, Pegasos and finally second hand Q1s from London. Some of the latter were ‘beheaded’ for different reasons, mostly to avoid crashing in to protruding balconies in the narrow streets of old La Coruña. Expansion of the system continued into the 1960s: Ciudad Escolar - San Pedro de Visma, San Amaro - Avenida de Hércules. Around 1970 the system went into a gradual decline. The last line, route 2, closed down on January 4th 1979.

Thanks, Marcos. These images are priceless!

New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud

AA Travel launched a "101 Must Dos" campaign to get Kiwis visiting their own country. It's a great idea, to rate our favourite spots in New Zealand, and the Automobile Association have also created a brilliant TV commercial to promote the campaign. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you smile, and if you are thinking of coming to New Zealand, it's a great snapshot of New Zealand scenery.

Road safety ads

Have a nice Easter holiday and take care!

A grieving man walks a lonely road to place a white cross to mark the site of fatal Easter road accident in New Zealand.

One of many drink driving advertisements from New Zealand:


Land Transport New Zealand's campaign against fatigue:

Land Transport New Zealand is different from other road safety organisations. As well as concentrating on the usual suspects (speeding, seatbelts, drink driving) they also make adverts warning you to be careful at road junctions.

Land Transport New Zealand provided New Zealand television viewers with a graphic description of the impact of speed on survivability in road crashes.

“When we drive fast we don’t realise the danger we’re in. If you’re driving at 90 km per hour and crash the speed your body impacts is the same as if you’re falling from the first floor of a building. At 110 km per hour the impact is the same as falling from the fifth floor. And at 125 km per hour the impact is like falling from the ninth floor.”

A collection of school principals talk about cars speeding near their schools and the impact it's had on their children.

School principals speak with gritty honesty about having a student struck down by a vehicle outside their school, in the NZ Police road safety campaign on speeding near schools.

One teacher, pictured, tells about a road around the back of the school where some of the motorists almost go airborne as they go over the hill.

Another teacher tells about a child stepping out on the crossing. “The car just went….”

Another tells it like it is… “You can imagine what it must be like if something weighing a tonne, made of metal, hits a small body”.

“Over the bonnet and into the windscreen and over the roof”

“When I realised that the marks that were on the road were actually the boy’s bloodstains it really hit home…”

The ad finishes with a shot of an empty desk and the super, “There’s no excuse for speeding around schools.”

Little Britain in Spain

Little England in Spain

Spain is a hot spot for northern Europeans, but local anger is growing. Where in the world is there an immigrant community who dominate the local economy, who dictate what gets developed and who local politicians fall over themselves to woo? Welcome to San Fulgencio, a town of 11,000 in the Spanish province of Alicante. With a 75 per cent foreign population made up of Britons, Germans and other Europeans, this traditionally homogeneous city has become a sort of open-door laboratory on immigration. Thousands of northern Europeans, tired of the damp and cold, are moving south to start new lives in sunny Spain. It is something of an irony that, once there, many try to re-create the lives they were so desperate to leave back home.

Bhutan

Michael Palin, the traveller

Michael Palin answers the Wanderlust travel magazine's travel CV questions:

Watch Michael Palin's travel documentaries online on GUBA.COM or on MAZALIEN.COM.

Jungle

Watch Jungle.1of3.Canopyworld | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

BBC's Virtual Jungle.

TALK BY JOHN BARLOW AT THE E.O.I.

EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL: HOW TO WRITE A TRAVEL BOOK ABOUT GALICIA

TODO AGAS O GRUÑIDO: COMO ESCRIBIR UN LIBRO DE VIAXES SOBRE GALICIA

Wednesday 18 February at 10.00

If you want to read the first chapter of John Barlow's book, click here.

Useful vocabulary and cooking tips:

A review of a book: Everything But The Squeal By John Barlow

The joy of pork
The whole hog

Oct 30th 2008
From The Economist

JOHN BARLOW, a British expatriate in Galicia, the rain-swept region of the Spanish north-west that gave birth to Franco, has an odd ambition: to eat every bit of a pig, from its tail to its snout. The ambition persists despite marriage to the long-suffering Susana, perhaps the only Galician vegetarian, despite the menace of cholesterol from all those fat-laden pork sausages and despite the threat (kindly pointed out by Susana) that eating pig brain will lead to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

What follows is a quixotic quest for the recipes that give good countryfolk—and doubtless Mr Barlow—ample waistlines and cheerful characters. The cocido (pork stew) from the politically conservative town of Lalín is nothing short of heroic in its mix of ingredients; there are kind words for Doña Aurora’s trotter stew; and an enthusiasm for blood sausages whatever the gruesome process of making them.

All this may be great fun for foodies, but the attraction of Mr Barlow’s book is that he goes well beyond the business of eating. He gives us a fascinating journal of his Galician wanderings, from village carnivals in the pouring rain to a hippy commune in the back of beyond via the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. What comes through is a deep affection not just for Galicia’s pigs—Mr Barlow singles out the long-backed Galician Celtic, hips swaying like Jayne Mansfield’s, for special mention—but also for Galicia’s people and culture.

No answer is ever a straightforward yes or no. No bureaucratic process is ever simple. No bit of history is without its compelling trivia (how many others would know, for example, that in Santiago de Compostela’s 12th-century church of Santa María Salomé there is a statue of an angel wearing glasses?). Mr Barlow pokes his nose in everywhere, and almost without exception people are kind and hospitable.

He meets all sorts, from Fidel Castro’s favourite cousin to Mañuel Fraga, minister under Franco, co-author of Spain’s democratic constitution and still Galicia’s political godfather. The charm is that Mr Barlow is so self-deprecating: his interview with Don Mañuel is a classic encounter between clueless journalist and superior, but patient, politician; his account of teaching phonetics at La Coruña’s university will make many a teacher blush with self-recognition; his Yorkshireman’s contempt for the posh British expatriate with barely a word of Spanish will amuse anyone with a knowledge of Britain’s class system.

None of this yet puts Mr Barlow in the Eric Newby category of travel writer, but he comes close enough in this, his third book. As for Susana and baby Nico, they are sometimes there, and sometimes not. But Susana, it seems, never complains, even though Mr Barlow’s ambition is clearly to indoctrinate Nico into the pleasures of pork.


If you want to know more about this book:
http://www.johnbarlow.net/jb_books.asp?bid=26&p=notes#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22612314@N07/