Picture this. I am standing in the queue in the menswear department of Century 21, the world’s greatest shop, clutching a rather spicy pair of pink golf trousers. These things usually retail at 90-100 of your Great British Pounds so words cannot even begin to describe the joy coursing through my veins as the beep of the scanner caused the cashier’s monitor to display the following:

$24.95

Or, at the current exchange rate

£17

Will I ever wear them in public? Who knows.

Here’s something else I know. I know what the Spanish couple who walked past me in the queue were saying about my newest purchase. And I know it wasn’t ‘Wow that Scottish chap has impeccable taste, don’t you think?’ They probably thought I wouldn’t be able to understand their ‘feedback’ but my repertoire of Spanish insults is actually quite impressive.

 I have heard that the practice of wearing such outlandish items of clothing in public is known as peacocking i.e. ‘showing off’ with brightly coloured things much like the wonderfully attractive animal does.  My motives for this purchase were much simpler though as I am definitely not a man of the peacock variety. I think a pair of pink golf trousers will go a long way to distracting my opponents when next I dust off my cheap, dodgy set of clubs, hopefully allowing my 3 digit scores to become 3 digit winning scores.

Luckily I found it pretty easy to justify this purchase at the time and even una invectiva abusiva (that’s Spanish for abusive tirade) couldn’t put a downer on my spirits because as well as making this fantastic purchase I had also secured another delightful hero sandwich and a bucket of Gatorade for dinner.

After I had finished my feast, which was fit for the kingliest of kings, and stopped grinning at my trousers it was time to welcome our Bostonian compadres to Manhattan. Unfortunately I had forgotten to organize a Devil Dog reception for them but hopefully we can all enjoy these fine snacks together at a later date.

I feel like I have given a lot of exposure to Devil Dogs on here without actually telling my faithful reader what they are like. With that in mind, here is a picture of me beside a Devil Dog van. You can see 2 Devil Dogs printed on the side of the van. Mmm

We all had another fantastic weekend, the highlight of which for me was our guided tour of the greatest arena in the world, the home of the 1^st ever Wrestlemania, MSG, Madison Square Garden! We even got to watch a bit of basketball as the USA and China’s D teams went head to head in front of a crowd of about 13 people and their grannies and dogs in a 20000 seater arena. I could probably have got some game time if I’d brought my Chinese passport with me. Some of the plays we saw were truly red reels.

Monday at Lab49 Tower saw me continuing with my 1^st draft of the global marketing plan as well as presenting me with the opportunity to run some of my ideas for the format of my final presentation past various people. After work, Claire and I set off for Long Island in the middle of a rather rainy and thundery storm to meet with the organizers of the 50^th annual Long Island Highland Games who we had been put in contact with by Matt, to NETWORK and see if there was anything we could contribute to their games. The meeting may as well have been tailor made for future Saltire Foundation information and recruiting sessions as we have all signed up to speak to members of the 7000 strong crowd about Scottish Heritage. Thank goodness for my 1 at Standard Grade history. What other internship program gives you to opportunity to do stuff like that, eh?

Tuesday was a day of firsts as I experienced my 1^st conference call and baseball game. The call lasted around half an hour and was helpful in clarifying the direction in which I should proceed with some of my Strategy research. It was also a good experience in multi-tasking as I frantically battled with a headset which wouldn’t sit right, an ear which needed covering so I could hear the phonecall going into the other one (The Lab has been rather busier than usual this week with plenty of hustling and bustling going on in the background of the office) and a fantastic set of notes from the call which refused to write themselves.

The ball game was everything I expected it to be with hot dogs (ask Claire how expensive it is to get a licence to sell these), home runs and nosebleed prices on the beers. The Yankees ran out 6-2 winners after a grand slam ace-goal-slapshot at the bottom of the 7^th green. I think.

Next up for me is applying the finishing touches to my draft marketing plan which will be presented on Friday afternoon. Creating something like this from scratch seemed a bit daunting to me at first as I’ve never attempted anything like it before. In fact there have been a few occasions where I’ve been tempted to draw a free-body diagram of the marketing plan to bring make it look less alien to me. Thankfully it is beginning to take shape now and I am beginning get a good idea of what the end product should look like and of how this work fits in with the company’s future plans. No need to give my ruler and scientific calculator an outing just yet then…