Recently in trivia Category

Cinemas in the Houston area are a thing of wonder, according to my ICIS colleagues there. For years I have been hearing of a cinema complex in Katy, Texas, just outside Houston, which not only has wide reclining seats, but also tables in front of the seats where waitresses bring you a meal while you're watching the film. Fantastic.

Cinemas everywhere have become vastly more comfortable, but theatres and opera houses, not to mention economy (coach) airline seats, have been slow to keep up. The hard narrow seats in the upper wings of London theatres, where you fight your neighbour for the armrest, are agony even for this snake-hipped Blog.

For those broader of beam, the new recently opened Dallas opera house has been designed by the Norman Foster architectural practice with maximum comfort in mind. During the design process, the architects reduced the number of seats from 3,300 to 2,200.

The architects said that they had found that, like many things in Texas, "the opera-going bottoms that would fill them are broader than they used to be," according to an article in Private Eye.

 (photo: dallasopera.org)

A rugby fan won himself £250,000 by kicking a ball from 30 metres directly onto the crossbar at the Saracens vs South Africa match on Tuesday.

Saracens fan Stuart Tinner won the giant cheque in the half-time kicking competition, and the video link has been circulating around the chemical publishing industry today, bringing joy and laughter into a grey afternoon. Thanks to Nigel for sending it my way.

I absolutely love this article about a newlywed couple finding out that their wedding cake was made of polystyrene, which Stuart spotted on the BBC news website today. Since everyone is usually too full to manage more sweet food at the end of a wedding reception, and the concept of the cake is more ceremonial and symbolic than gastronomic, the Blog thinks that this would be a good new market for hard-pressed polystyrene producers to explore.

Picture his despair when Joe Chang, a die-hard New York Mets fan - who did NOT want to see the New York Yankees win the World Series - got to his desk the morning following their triumph to find it covered in Yankees logos.

His mournful cry of "Noooo!!!" chilled the bones of all who were working in the Park Avenue South NYC offices of ICIS Chemical Business.

Photographer Vincent Bousserez has made a series of exquisite pictures of tiny plastic folk in giant landscapes. The collection has achieved a mass following, and his photographs sell for up to £1,800, according to an article in today's Metro.

The Blog has often mused on why golf is the sport du moment of the petrochemical industry. Why not football? Why not tennis? Why not flower-arranging?

Football had its brief moment in the spotlight after some eager 5-a-side games at EPL and the infamous annual APLA national team championship where players' nationalities can be pretty fluid and injuries are always multiple.

After this brief flowering, golf has reasserted its stranglehold on the industry. As a non-golfer, I've enjoyed the alternative trips round stately homes, spa outings, the funny speeches and especially the takeaway golfshirts with company logos which stay untouched, some still in their plastic wrappers, on a high shelf in the wardrobe.

Now a friend has emailed the Blog a promo video for Calloway's "Big Bertha" golf club which is unsuitable not only for a corporate blog but also so unsuitable that it was quarantined by the ICIS anti-virus filter. At first I thought it must be a spoof, but have subsequently found it on YouTube. While browsing through Calloway's range of amusing golfing ads, I came across this one on "hitting a 3-metal from salad" ...

According to the American Chemistry Council's new website which launched today, plastic is the newest trend in couture, and to make the point the site will present the Gen Art "Fresh Faces in Fashion" Los Angeles Show on 29 October, hosted by actress Kaley Cuoco, star of the popular CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory.

"From Paris to Milan to New York, plastics are showing up in a variety of innovative and unusual ways on the runway including funky jewelry, 10-inch platform shoes and even sequined mini-dresses made from recycled plastic bottles."

The Blog was particularly entranced by this link to "How Many Bottles to Make a Handbag."

(photo: plasticsmakeitpossible.com)

Anyone with Asian connections will know all about the cult of pre-wedding photos in exotic and luxurious locations, but one couple has chosen to make theirs unique by having them taken at AirAsia's low-cost terminal in Kuala Lumpur.  

The Blog is full of admiration at this scoop by fellow blogger Barbara Cockburn on Flight, since we both started our blogging careers at the Reed Charity Blogathon two years ago.

The photos remind me that when ICIS and Flight shared a Singapore office in Millenia Tower, romantic couples in wedding dress would come every day to be photographed at the foot of the tower, clearly an auspicious symbol in the Singapore landscape.

(photo: Dennis Yap/Flight)

I had to laugh yesterday when I saw a leaflet for a local stand-up comedy gig starring an up-and-coming comedian called Stuart Goldsmith. Just why it should be so amusing to picture olefins trader Stuart Goldsmith as a stand-up comedian is hard to explain to those readers who don't know him.

I remember being impressed to see a review of a new Picasso biography by art historian John Richardson, when we all know the more famous John Richardson, blogger of Asian Chemicals Connections.

A simple Google search shows that very few of us have sole rights to our own name.

My namesake is a Viennese opera singer, my daughter's is a supermodel, and my husband's is busy scoring goals for Port Vale when he can take time off from being an Australian surfing champion.

For more on same, see: Two John Mitchells

(photo: EPCA 2009)

These Calvin Klein ck USB shades fit the bill for the Blog for being both plastic and designed for business travel.  The right arm has a flash drive that can be plugged into a computer, so one minute you can be looking cool and the next hard at work, although pretty stupid if you try to wear them with only one arm.