Attended the quarterly EU Cultural Counsellors meeting. I've been to many over the years, in Japan and Thailand, and they're always interesting affairs. Presidency of the EU rotates every six months and is now with Hungary so we had some proposals from them and their Cultural Counsellor promised to send me a documentary on Puskas. The Poles assume Presidency in July and are already making a bid to bring a film festival, provisionally entitled Made in Europe, Powered by Poland which raised a few eyebrows.In the evening Liz and I attended the opening of an exhibition by Wang Shugang. He makes sculptures of people, always in groups and usually in bronze. He has a strong German connection having studied & lived there for 10 years and is married to a German. Lots of Germans in attendance including our friends who invited us. Interesting chat with a Dutch guy who's setting up a business in Handan, a non-descript city in the middle of nowhere with a million plus population (there are over 120 such cities in China). He said he was very lonely. "It hasn't even got a Starbucks".
I see Starbucks have dropped the name from their logo.
ReplyDeleteWhat, you mean it's just the visual without the word now? Actually, in China they're known as Xingbake. Xing means star while bake sounds like bucks.
ReplyDeleteYes. Just the inner circle visual, which has gone from black to green. So it no longer says Starbucks or coffee. This was announced a couple of weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteNot only is the company named after a character in Moby Dick, but Starbuck is the name of an old whaling family from Nantucket.