Tag: piece de resistance

Mighty Fine Print

Whenever a season of sports comes down to the last couple of teams, I pay extra attention whether it’s the Super Bowl, the World Series, or college basketball’s March Madness. A championship is the culmination of an entire season, so the final game puts the stakes at their highest. Just last week I made it to the finals of a competition myself. The thing is, I didn’t even know I was playing.

“I win!”

We’ve all received one of these flyers at one time or another, haven’t we?  A bold, colorful announcement suggesting we’ve won something big.  In this case, a Viking River Cruise (red capital letters, top left) suggests a tapped mailing list because I’ve cruised with Viking twice.  Regardless, this flyer almost went into the trash before I read some all of the fine print.  And I must say, whoever came up with the nuts/bolts of this particular contest deserves the Academy Award for Best Producer.

To begin with, notice the element labeled “Combination Box”.  This little device is ingenious for two reasons.  First, it stretches the envelope the flyer came in beyond a flat piece of paper, tempting the recipient to wonder what’s in there?  And second, the device is “activated” by pulling a tab to reveal the “5-digit VIN number” you see here.  Then you scratch off the gold circle further down the page to reveal another 5-digit number and – “how about that?” – they’re the same number, which makes me a “Grand Prize Winner”.

The flyer also contains utterly random stuff that has no bearing whatsoever on the contest.  I am “cordially invited to ‘The Great America Cruising Expo'” (a fictitious event).  Just below the black box is a “VIP Winning Number 5508738” (also useless).  Finally, when I call the toll-free number at the bottom (which, to be clear, I will never call), I’m supposed to mention “Code AKSC”.  Pretty sure anyone could call the toll-free number, mention the code, and discover they’re also a “Grand Prize Winner”.

Now for the good stuff.  Here’s the lower right corner of the flyer.  Call Within 48 Hours…?  Within 48 hours of what, exactly?  How do they know I’m calling within 48 hours of anything?  More importantly, look at the four “gifts” below; one of which is apparently mine.  Take a guess – which trip do you think I won?

Credit to the contest producers; I guessed wrong.  I would’ve thought the 7-Night Resort Stay at Worldwide Destinations was my prize.  After all, how much vaguer can a trip description be?  If I called the toll-free number they’d probably go, “Yes you won but you can only take the trip on these 7 nights”.  And “worldwide destination” technically means anywhere in the world so maybe I’ve won seven nights in the middle of Iowa.

In fact, the prize I “won” is the Caribbean Cruise for Two for Up to 7 Nights.  The more I think about it, that one makes more sense.  Any ship in Caribbean waters could be considered a “cruise” (even a foreign freighter with an empty cargo hold).  “Up to 7 nights” could mean just two nights or even an overnight.  And however I actually get to this cruise ship is on my own dime.

Mighty fine print

The pièce de résistance is on the back of the flyer: the fine print.  The five hundred words you see above include the odds of winning (which is how I know I won the Caribbean cruise).  Out of every 2,000,000 mailed flyers, 1,999,997 will win the Caribbean cruise, while just three people will win the three trips of any real value.  In other words, one person wins a free Viking River Cruise.  Okay, enough already; now this flyer goes into the trash, where it should’ve gone in the first place.

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LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle – Update #2 (read about the start of this project in Fit for a (Fairy Tale) King)

We continued to move mountains this week (as expected) but I was delighted to see bits of the castle starting to rise up already.  Apparently I need to bring in cranes in addition to my earth-moving equipment.  Bags 3 and 4 (of 23 bags of pieces) contained a lot of tiny, interesting, colorful bits.  I had to be careful those little guys didn’t run down the mountains and try to escape.

For the first time in a half-dozen models I’m here to tell you… LEGO left out a piece.  They really did.  If you look at this step in the process (and yes, I’m already through 50+ steps), that little two-dot middle-row-right was AWOL.  I checked the bags a dozen times thinking he was still in there.  I scanned the piles of parts another dozen times.  No two-dot.  Maybe he’ll show up in another bag further into the build but by then it’ll be too late.  The good news is, his location is buried inside the mountains and is not structural.  You will never see the small cavity created by his absence.

Tiny, interesting, colorful bits

What you see in the first photo is only about half the size of the completed model.  It will be a full rectangle of Bavarian Alps when it’s done.  Of course, by then you won’t even notice all the earthmoving I’ve accomplished, because Neuschwanstein Castle will utterly lord over the (LEGO) land.

Running build time: 1:52.

Total leftover pieces: 17.

Accompanying movie soundtrack: Leap Year (2010).  I could use the excuse of the lovely Amy Adams to justify this favorite, but this so-so rom-com came out when she was hardly a name.  However, Randy Edelman’s score is wonderful. It’s so much larger than the movie itself.  “Anna’s Theme” – which the score returns to again and again – is a calming tune using a lot of piano and guitar.  Elsewhere traditional Irish instruments make their inevitable appearance.  Maybe the movie is forgettable but the music most definitely is not.  Have a listen here.

Note: Life In A Word will be taking a vacation break for the next few weeks.  Join me for the next chapter of the castle construction on August 20th!

The Sweets Life

“Pagina Non Trovata” has the look of an elegant Italian phrase (or an opera title), until translation and context reveal its harsh reality. The phrase means “page not found”, which in my instance referred to a (former) on-line job posting for Italian candy company Ferrero. My punishment for seeking the advertisement two months after the fact? Ferrero, the second largest chocolate/confectionery company in the world, is (was) looking for sixty taste-testers – “sensory judges” if you will – to offer opinions on its products. O.M.Gee I wish I’d seen this sooner.  Instead, I won’t be one of the chosen few because, well, “page not found”.

Let’s ponder this (past) job opportunity for a paragraph, shall we?  Ferrero is (was) searching the world for several “average consumers”, who would (will now) get paid to eat chocolate.  “No experience necessary”, they claimed (otherwise by definition you aren’t an average consumer).  The only real requirement, absent food allergies, is (was) a willingness to move to northwest Italy, which darn-it-all means France and Switzerland are just as easy to visit.  Ferrero gives (gave) three months of paid training, followed by an offer to join the company as a part-time taster. “Part-time” in Italy translates to maybe a) second job, or probably b) la dolce vita (“the sweet life”, which definitely does not include a job).  Ferrero’s job is akin to unwrapping a bar of chocolate and finding a Wonka golden ticket.

If Ferrero created run-of-the-mill chocolates, searching late on their job opp wouldn’t be such a tragedy.  But Ferrero makes Ferrero Rocher (of course they do), those gold-foiled balls of decadent chocolate and hazelnuts.  They also make Mon Cheri, those pink-foiled chocolate cubes filled with cherries and sweet liqueur.  They even make Tic-Tac’s for gosh sakes, the boxed pill-like mints all-the-rage when I was a kid.  And finally, their pièce de résistance (or in Italy, “piu degno de nota”), on which the entire company was founded over sixty years ago, Ferrero makes Nutella.

Maybe it was half-hearted reading up to now, but mention Nutella and most people really sit up and listen.  I’m convinced Ferrero puts a secret something into Nutella to make consumers crave hazelnut chocolate spread all the more (bolstering the theory Starbucks does the same with its coffee drinks).  Why else would shoppers storm a small store – and engage in a brawl – when the Nutella stock was discounted 50% (see video here)?  Which leads to an even nuttier question: why have I never tried Nutella myself?

Nuts+chocolate equals killer-combination – I get that.  Give me a basket of Halloween candy and I’ll fish out all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  Offer me thirty-one flavors at Baskin-Robbins and I’ll easily short-list peanut-butter-and-chocolate.  Sell me M&M’s at the movie theater and I’ll always choose peanut over plain.  But in all my examples, I’m talking peanuts, not hazelnuts.  Nutella spread is new territory for me, which means I’m the perfect candidate for Ferrero’s job. I have no experience with hazelnuts.

The more I read about my future employer, the more I’m impressed with their credentials.  Ferrero buys 25% of the world’s hazelnut production (and fittingly, acquired the world’s largest hazelnut producer four years ago).  They employ 40,000 candy-men and women in a network of 38 trading companies and 18 factories.  Ferrero keeps its recipes under lock-and-key, never letting the press into its facilities nor hosting a press conference, and always engineering its own production equipment.  A recent survey labeled Ferrero “the most reputable company in the world“.

As if I need a clincher to make this decision, last January Ferrero acquired the Nestle’s company’s candy division.  Holy cowbells.  On top of Nutella, I get to taste-test Sweetarts and Butterfingers and Laffy Taffy and the decadent Nestle’s Crunch (silver-foiled chocolate with a generous helping of crisped rice)?  Why even pay me?

I could do this job.  The more I think about it the more I’m convinced Ferrero needs 61 sensory judges.  I’m just (fashionably) late to the party.  All I need to do is brush up on my college Italian (no joke; I spent a year in Rome back then), convince my wife that our dogs, cats, and horses would be next to heaven in northwest Italy, and promptly board the next Alitalia flight.  Sweet life – er, dolce vita – here I come!

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”, and the USA Today article, “Dream Job: Italy’s Nutella maker seeks 60 taste-testers…”