A new photo of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, visiting the Namheung Youth Chemical Factory in Anju, north of Pyongyang, was released on Friday by the country's official news agency. The agency did not state when the photo was taken.
May 2009 Archives
The Global Trader Summit 2009 which took place in Singapore this week, attracting many of the chemical industry's finest, seemed like a good excuse to dust off a few old trader stories and gossip.As delegates at this by-invitation-only event dallied over cocktails at the opening reception in the Equinox Complex atop the Swissotel The Stamford, they were able to admire the awesome view of 735 idle ships in the Strait of Malacca, before spending the following days discussing the busting of the global commodities super cycle and whether big was still beautiful.
That all puts the Blog in mind of a few old industry tales ...
(photo of Stamford and Fullerton Hotels, Singapore: Rex)
With an early flourish, EPCA has opened online registration for its 43rd Annual Meeting in Berlin from 3 to 7 October 2009, with an email invitation yesterday to members to sign up for the one-time only cut-price offer of EUR 700 per delegate.The invitation also talks of "extremely competitive rates for hotel- and meeting rooms, that are all at walking distance, in order to comply with your desire to reduce costs whilst being able to benefit from at least the same top quality level of services and business session programme as last year."
An online attendance list with the email contacts of registered delegates will be available on the EPCA website from 1 July.
Last year's Annual Meeting in Monte Carlo had a record attendance, and this year's event will have its opening party at Mercedes World.
Manchester United footballer Park Ji Sung has been a great commercial success for the club, aside from his sporting prowess, since his megastar status in South Korea has helped them sell 1.2 million credit and debit cards there in the past three years, according to a pull-out newspaper supplement celebrating tomorrow's Manchester United vs Barcelona European Cup final. By contrast, only 380,000 of the flexible plastic cards have been sold in the past ten years in the UK.
"In effect, it means that one in five of United's "core" Korean fans have one. (And) ...The Korean edition of United's official website receives more than two million page impressions every month and United also agreed a lucrative sponsorship deal with the Seoul Metropolitan Government that runs to 2011."
My fellow blogger, Paul Hodges, on his Chemicals and the Economy blog, has posted some more credit crunch jokes.
(photo Rex)
"A Town Called Panic" (Panique au village), a Belgian comedy movie about plastic toys, previewed at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday. The review in Hollywoodreporter.com says that it is "absolutely brilliant:"
The main characters are Cowboy, Indian, and Horse, who improbably live together in a town called Panic. They are plastic toys, twisted into impossible positions, which rest on little stands, and it's this fact that provides a great deal of the film's novelty. Various bizarre and even surrealistic things happen to them, as they journey to the center of the earth, get stuck in something that resembles the North Pole, and discover a parallel universe of water that is populated by pointy-headed bad guys who wear diving suits and goggles and look really, really weird.
The jokes come fast and hard, and part of the humor arises from the American accent (in French) and the American slang that the characters use.
I particularly liked this photo of starlet Jeanne Balibar at the film's photocall on Friday, sporting the hairstyle well-known at ICIS as "European hair goes to
Here's another crafty way for babies to get themselves out and about with their parents. Ideal for car journeys and trips to restaurants, the Iiamo Go self-heating baby bottle has disposable heating cartridges and claims to heat milk to 37 degrees C, body temperature, in four minutes. Its Danish designers say in an announcement today that it's phthalate-free and "design and functionality come together with a convenient feature missing from parenthood: freedom." (photo Iamo)
Nice picture in the TimesOnline Photo Gallery today, under Pictures of the Day:
"A vendor pulls a handcart carrying balls made from recycled plastic along a street in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad."
(photo Amit Dave/Reuters, TimesOnline)
From the number of forwarded emails the Blog receives, I think it's fair to assume that no-one reads the disclaimers at the bottom of emails. There's a report of a novel disclaimer entitled "We will shrink your shoes" in today's New Scientist.
FINALLY, disclaimers at the bottom of emails sometimes threaten those who make unauthorised use of them with legal action. The email Mike Donoghue received from the University of Washington took a different tack: "If you are not the intended recipient, or if the message has been addressed to you in error, do not read, disclose, reproduce, distribute or otherwise use this transmission. Otherwise, your shoes will suddenly get too tight."
A story in today's Times amusingly titled "No smoke without ire," about a flight from Heathrow delayed in take-off due to a missing ashtray, reminded me of my own infuriating "Diary of a Flight to Amsterdam." I bet the "unspecified piece of equipment" there was an ashtray too.
Why mess around with old-fashioned paper business cards when you can be chewing on Meat Cards? Have your contact information seared onto beef jerky by laser beam. It's environmentally friendly and protein rich.
(Photo Meat Cards)
For more about business cards:
PS
The Blog is horrified to hear that in addition to beef jerky business cards, there is also "Brief Jerky," a line in male underwear, but strictly non-edible.
What everyone loves about the Northeast Chems Association (NECA) Sports Outing is that it is usually three days out of the office playing golf in the sunshine on the glorious rolling greens of the luxury Seaview Marriott hotel at Absecon on the New Jersey coast close to Ocean City.Regular chemical golfers describe it as their favourite week of the year, better even than the week-long festivities of NECA's Winter Meeting in New York. And for the non-golfers there's the tennis tournament, and for the less lively a nice rest in the spa before adjourning to the Oval Room for cocktails.
Only this year the industry's keen golfers are finding it harder than ever to justify the time out of the office for the event which is nominally on Thursday 21 May. An early headcount suggests that the total number of attendees will be around 150, down from the usual 300 of recent years, according to one long-time member.
The reasons for the drop are simple - the Houston contingent can't justify the expense or the time, and "lots of companies don't exist in chemicals any more - Rohm and Haas, Du Pont," the member added.
And the cost is nothing to sneeze at, even with the fee being reduced this year and a "barbecue dinner (in the afternoon) at the conclusion of golf at the outdoor Pavilion rather than the traditional evening banquet". Members calculate that with the golf and dinner on Thursday 21 May at $295, plus one night at the Seaview Marriott ($169/night NECA rate), it's $464 a head, and that's without staying around for the poker and the peripheral events.
Golf photos (mine and friends') from bygone days, hotel photo from Marriott.
Tucked away at the bottom of the new weekly online newsletter from the US plastics industry trade association, SPI's Inside Edge, I see that they have some links to their own "In the Hopper" blog which has some cutesy chemicals human interest postings which are right up this Blog's street.Check out:
"A Chip off the Ol' Polymer," or how to brag about your children under the guise of writing about chemicals. Moi?
"Plastics help me get away from it all," or look at all my rugged sports kit.
"Bananas and the Virtues of Plastics," or what I did on my holidays.
(Photos from SPI)
![cannes film festival may 2009 courtesy of Rex_921240a[1].jpg](http://www.icis.com/blogs/icis-chemicals-confidential/cannes%20film%20festival%20may%202009%20courtesy%20of%20Rex_921240a%5B1%5D.jpg)
Acrylic 3D specs were the must-have accessory as the Cannes Film Festival kicked off with Disney's animated film Up on Wednesday night. As filmgoers at cinema's biggest and glitziest gathering ditched their designer shades, it's likely that they gave not a moment's thought to the petrochemical material in their plastic anaglyph glasses, which were there to enhance the film's spectacular 3D special effects, according to this article today on Yahoo News.
(Photo Rex)
The Blog's eye is drawn this morning to a very atmospheric photo on the front page of today's International Herald Tribune showing some of the hundreds of ships - "more than the 130-ship Spanish Armada" - in the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Singapore, where they are waiting for jobs during the slowdown.
ICIS editors are setting off from the Singapore office on Tuesday night for the seven hour flight to Seoul, South Korea for the APIC conference on 14-15 May, despite news of delegate cancellations due to swine flu fears. I've been following with fascination the news from Asian companies who have been talking quite openly about their cancellations. Steve Tan's article on 5 May quoted several Japanese and Chinese firms which had already cancelled, and Bohan Loh's piece on 6 May had announcements from Thailand's Siam Cement Group (SCG); Taiwan's CPDC, Formosa Petrochemicals and CPC; and Singapore's PCS.
In addition to some genuine health concerns, delegates have also said that they are concerned about being detained in quarantine if they travel. Others believe that some firms are cancelling for commercial reasons, as the economic downturn bites further into travel budgets.
Undeterred, the ICIS team is setting off to meet contacts, cover conference presentations and interview industry bigwigs. Steve Tan, ICIS Singapore managing editor says that his schedule is packed with meetings with Korean contacts. Even if the 800-plus delegate list is shorter than for last year's popular Singapore APIC, it looks like those who make it to the event will enjoy a less hectic conference with more time to network with those who've braved the journey.
In a new and daunting undergarment to romeos everywhere, elastomers and heating crystals will not only pull in those determinedly extruding parts of the female anatomy but also melt the unwanted cellulite away, according to this article in today's Daily Mail.
As women sit bathed in the comforting warmth of the self-heating crystals, and the cellulite simply "drips" away, the Blog hopes that unlike the new Alli slimming drug it does not result in unsightly "leakage".
In what may prove to be a turning point for the beleaguered Scottish plastics industry, EU MEPs in
MEPs with clearly no sense of the 100 year-old tradition of wearing sealskin sporrans with full Highland dress, including Scotland's beloved tartan kilts, have sided with the wee cuddly seals to make it illegal to sell sealskin sporrans after this autumn, according to this article in today's Telegraph.
When I told my colleagues I was going to a boxing match last week they were incredulous.
"So you like watching sweaty men beating each other to a pulp," said one.
"You're turning into a boy," said another friend.
As it turned out, the charity boxing black tie dinner was mostly about dinner, drinking and conspicuously generous corporate charity, with only a fraction of the time devoted to watching the boxing.
There were eight bouts - each with three 1.5 minute rounds - and the boxers were well clad in bright padded headguards and boxing gloves filled with "shock-absorbent polyurethane foam", and some intimidating protective plastic mouthguards. In the end, there's no getting away from the fact that even with all that protection, there's still blood spraying everywhere, but at least I didn't have to watch a major knock-out like in the Ricky Hatton vc Manny Pacquiao fight at the weekend.
Plastic shoes aren't just limited to jellies and crocs for paddling in rockpools. Now designer Vivienne Westwood has a collection of PVC shoes at very reasonable prices, produced by Brazilian shoe giant Grendene, which has "developed an ecologically-aware production process in which every product is recyclable and challenged the world's perception of plastic by fusing its thermoplastic technology with the talents some of the most innovative designers on the planet."
Stephen Burns in ICIS Houston has made this video of last week's Southwest Chemical spring charity golf day. I think I recognise a few of those backs. He writes ...
The Southwest Chemical Association held its spring charity golf day on Monday 4 May, under glorious blue skies at the Kingwood Country Club north of Houston. ICIS was there as a sponsor, with staff crewing the beverage carts. The event raises money for college scholarships for the children of members of the chemical industry.
The cinema was more crowded than I'd ever seen it on Monday. Three screens were showing the new "X-Men Origins - Wolverine" and two had Nigel's favourite "Hannah Montana", so there were groups of teens, mums with parties of girls, couples and seniors, all milling around the multiplex lobby and queuing up for coke and popcorn combos (with free gift) on a grey bank holiday after two glorious sunny days outdoors.
We went to see "State of Play", which is a fine film packed full of enough of the essentials to keep this Blog happy: blogs, newspapers, Russell Crowe, lots of noir night scenes, trickery, betrayal, bad blondes and good brunettes (although no credible love interest) and a few good jokes.
There were no chemicals bad guys this time, but plenty of military baddies (mercenaries only, definitely not US forces) and political villains, and a token cold heartless female boss (easy to spot from her British accent) played by the gorgeous Helen Mirren who, in her limited time onscreen managed to use every single non-American English word which Americans find so endearing, like bloody, knickers and w**ker.
I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say that everything works out and the newspaper presses roll another day. That's when you know it's just fiction.
For a proper review of the film, see IMDB.
Rotterdam
Plunging demand for fuel is triggering a growing global supply glut, and
A revolting mass of six million tonnes of discarded plastic is spinning slowly on its own axis in a patch of the northeastern Pacific, roughly twice the size of
Now Project Kasei, a mission to map and explore its extent will depart from
It may turn out that the timing of Floggers was fortunate, because although everyone was joking about swine flu, they were still hugging and (social) kissing with abandon, and no-one had yet started to think about avoiding mass gatherings. Particularly gatherings on their own turf, and which couldn't really be classed as business travel.For sure, some regular faces were missing, and the half-size attendance booklet showed that only 73 tables were taken, instead of last year's 94. But these banqueting venues are clever, and somehow the place looked as full and hectic as ever. Ann Widdecombe's speech went down well, with some rabble-rousing comments about UK business drowning in red tape and regulations. I liked her anecdotes - one about a man in an audience who had slept through her one of her speeches, and another about dealing with questions she couldn't answer - which she delivered with great comic timing in her high shrieky voice, before rushing off back to the House of Commons for the afternoon vote on the Gurkhas.
You couldn't help but notice that the list of apres-lunch suites was considerably shorter than in previous years, and that some of the big companies were sharing rather than hosting multiple tables. But you'd never think there was a 20-40% downturn in sales volumes from the crowd outside the Audley Arms at 5pm, where a black-and-yellow crime scene tape had been applied along the pavements, and private security guards hired to heave the crowds back onto the pavements and out of the way of the passing traffic.
A team from ICIS Houston tackled an epic journey on two wheels across central Texas last week, but there was more than a bit of drama along the way.
Stephen Burns, Angela Garzon, Ron Marshall, Heather Doyle, Landon Feller and Steven McGinn, plus Fred Seelig of sister magazine ICB riding for Team BP, all began training in January for the 25th BP Multiple Sclerosis charity bike ride. The two-day event takes riders on a demanding journey all the way from Texas to Austin.
The team covered more than 2,000 cumulative miles from January and raised more than $4,000, including a $1,000 prize for winning the RE fit2win competition. To date the money has helped the 2009 event raise some $13 million.
Then, on the eve of the ride severe thunderstorms brought flooding and the threat of tornadoes to the central Texas corridor. The route's midway overnight spot at La Grange was washed out and managing editor Stephen Burns and wife Caro had to abandon an attempt to set up the team's camp, although they did manage to record some stark video footage.
Logistical issues meant that Landon, Steven and Fred were left carrying the flag for ICIS. They pedalled 66 miles through beautiful rolling hills covered in Texas wildflowers, with the scenery offset by a headwind of nearly 30 miles per hour.
"Crossing the finish line made me feel like a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm," Landon Feller declared.
Dog bites man - who cares? But man bites dog, now that's news. It's an old gag, but that's what I thought when I read an email yesterday from my friend John R, our Asian economics guru and director of ICIS insight Asia, with a link to his blog posting about singer Adam Lambert on American Idol, and a recommendation to listen to his rendition of "Mad World" on YouTube, along with the full lyrics to the song, from start to end.
Has the world gone mad indeed, when our economics pundits are making American Idol recommendations? Now that must be news, so of course I had to check it out first thing this morning when I got into the office. Sorry John, but I just don't get it. Perhaps you had to be there ...
