We arrived in Vinh; mother, her friend, her children and I. Something was immediately suspicious. Vinh is a shitty city in the middle of Vietnam, it’s small dusty and close to the border with Cambodia. Everyone is poor. We pull up to a large house. A mansion.

At the front of the house was a large bar and restaurant decked out with expensive furniture. The same was true for the hotel next door. A mid sized hotel which was nicely furnished. The problem with it all was, it was deserted. The bar and restaurant was closed, the hotel was closed. It was as if someone with more money than sense thought it would be a good idea one summer to open up a bar and a hotel, only to get bored by the whole thing.

When we got into the house proper, everything was ornate. There were two of those china vases that were 2m high adorning the entrance and lots of shiny swords adorning the walls. I flicked on the 52 inch TV and watched BBC World rather nervously in the living room.

I quizzed my mother as to why we were there. She said it was because her friend had to visit someone. That night I overheard a few people speaking. My mother’s friend couldn’t visit. There were problems with the paper work. The prison wouldn’t allow it at such short notice.

The prison. I confronted mother and she came out with it. Her friend was to meet the stabber of Vinh; The stabber of Vinh?

The story goes like this:

The stabber of Vinh was part of a triad, based in Vinh. In Vietnamese we don’t use the word triad, it translates closer to the “black society”. Anyway, the black society traffics Heroin from Cambodia into Vietnam. With Vinh being situated in the centre of Vietnam, and its transport links to Hanoi and Saigon, it made perfect sense for the trade. So this gentleman imported Heroin. One day, he got into an argument with his “brother,” and stabbed him, hence, the name “The stabber of Vinh”. Fearing prosecution he fled to England.

Once he got to England, under a fake name, he set to work doing what all Vietnamese people without legal status do. He started growing weed. Weed houses.

The authorities have been pretty good at closing down weed houses. They use infrared cameras attached to helicopters and track houses with a lil too much infrared leaking out of them. This was how he was caught. Once in prison, the stabber of Vinh came up with a master plan. Seek asylum. The fool tried to convince the British authorities that he was in fact the stabber of Vinh. He couldn’t be sent back to Vietnam or else he’d be executed.

The British authorities at first didn’t believe him. Why on earth would you admit to being a murderer. The stabber of Vinh was rather persuasive though, proudly producing newspaper clippings of him and the event. He was promptly sent back to Vietnam. The extradition was a big thing. The story goes that 9 police cars flanked the car he was in, fearing the black society would attack. My mother knew him, because she was hired to act as a translator for the extradition.

That’s the aside. So here I was, sitting in the house of the head of the black society. She was a Cambodian woman who spoke perfect Vietnamese. She drove a brand new BMW as her pride and joy, a lovely Lexus was getting some work done. As she drove us around she would stop at green lights and go at red lights. Seriously. She was high on Ice. Ice being the aka of crystal meth in Asia.

The next day I was sitting in the house. Within the next hour I saw about 15 people enter the house. They all entered rooms and vanished from sight. 2 hours later everyone emerged. They all looked a lil spaced out.

We ate grilled Goat’s breast and drank Goat’s breast vodka. That isn’t just a funky name. The lurid drink is white in colour and does indeed contain Goat’s breast.

As we were leaving, the woman gave my mother a black block. She said it was a chinese medicine made out of tigers in Cambodia. Really expensive and very much against the WWF. I was so happy to get back to Saigon.

In Saigon, my mother’s friend introduced me to a pretty girl. She was the daughter of one of those unsavory men we met in Vinh. She had studied the hotel industry in Geneva while her father sold vast sums of heroin. The vacant hotel next door may have been hers. She tipified the sweet girl next door and was pretty. She only wore dresses. I caught her stealing a few glances at me.

A film co written by Luc Besson; set in Paris 2010, packed with lots of free running (Parkour) and a leading lady who used to do porn. Don’t let the fact that it’s made by a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys dissuade you.

If that sounds like your cup of tea then read on. Better yet, go to your local bittorrent tracker.

Trailer

The film’s set in Paris 2010 where the city has walled in the banlieues. I think they were trying to draw contrasts with that beloved sliced and diced swiss cheese state that…i’ll digress.

The French subtitles refer to banlieue as barrios. I find it a tad annoying:

• Banlieue
• Ghetto
• Barrios
• Favela
• Gacekondas
• Chawls

They all mean the same thing. Poor cunts living next to a city, defined by a high level of unemployment and the crime it entails.

I just love how Luc Besson portrays women. It’s how all men fantasize women should be. Spunky.

Lola and her panties.

So the waif like girl has been kidnapped by K2, a fat mother fucker with lots of guns. He halls her past a platoon of mercenaries. One grabs her arse and tells her what he’d like to do with her. Five minutes later and the roles are reversed, she’s got the gun. As they’re leaving she shoves a gun in the guys face. Takes off her panties, shoves it in the guys mouth and makes him chew it.

The film is light on plot and heavy on action. I don’t like writing about films. Just fucking watch it.

For more information about what the film is actually about, head on over to IMDB.

Max got drunk a few months ago. He was in a bad way. We decided to leave him in the office after he refused to go home. The next day we arrived to the sweet smell of ammonia. He’d pissed himself.

A few months later, Max finally felt enough guilt to buy us a new couch. Guilt is a rather rare and disturbing development in Max’s psyche.

After buying the couch from Max’s manager, we towed it through Kingston. The heat was immense and we sat down for a quick fag break. From here on in, we took a break every 5 minutes.

We passed our old school, Tiffin Boys, and decided to pop in and take a couple of snaps. Unfortunately the CCTV caught us and a couple of bemused teachers confronted us. Thankfully they were nice enough to let us take a few pictures before moving us on. That’s Mr King on the left, my old Geography teacher.

After seeing Mr King, I decided a pint would be best. The problem is the closest pub, was full of our old teachers. On a summers afternoon, all the teachers fuck off down the pub. It’s an unwritten rule that students are not to fraternise with the teachers. They’re embarressed of us. Like people don’t know they’re bloody teachers. For the Tiffinian’s amongst you, we saw:

• O’Connell
• Williams
• Liddy
• Skirton
• Lipchenska [sic]
• Girling

I started chatting to them. I offered them all a job . They kindly refused. At this point the cider soaked in and we decided to take Bertie to London.

It’s surprisingly easy to get a couch onto a train. At first, you feel slightly eccentric, but after 10 minutes it’s just like the commute. I read through that shite paper, The London Paper; While it’s better than the London Lite, it’s still just an aggregation of the AP. I’m secretly hoping that i’ll be in it tomorrow, under the “You were on the train sitting on that couch looking dapper, coffee sometime? x” section.

The couch had never seen the London Eye before, so we decided to stop by. British Airways refused our couch on the Eye. Maybe next time.

After the Eye, we dragged the sofa over the bridge towards Embankment. I got a busker to serenade Max and I. Max got a little carried away and tried to kiss me.

After that little incident, I decided I needed another drink. We entered the first pub along that steep road towards Charing Cross. The pint tasted like it’d been sweetened with sugar. Do avoid. We met some chef’s from the Royal Society of Arts, he did his best to explain what or where it was, but I really wasn’t listening. I do remember where they were from; Scotland, Liverpool and Sweden respectively. They seemed each to bear the stereotypes of their respective places.

My phone camera isn’t best suited to night pictures. We asked quite a few people to take a picture with their cameras, but no one’s emailed them to me. Darn.

I can’t remember how many people have sat on this couch. I’m assuming it’s a lot.

To the future

Bertie is resting in our office. I don’t know if he can bear another trip. We’ll try and find another sofa from somewhere. I was thinking down the Mall, Leicster Sq and Hyde Park next. During the summer we could do the festivals. Maybe calling Ikea would be a good idea.

Click on page 2 for the full gallery.

We’ve been plodding along with this business in its current form for about 8 months now. We’ve tried vfd regional newspapers, leaflets, google adsense and stalking. Some have been effective, some havn’t. Maybe one day i’ll number crunch our return on investment for each medium. Anyhow, our new shot at the big time.

Our business targets a specific demographic, namely; households with a child in Year 5.

Step 1.

Data

I first of all tried to get a copy of the 2002 Electoral Register (the last register with everyones address on) and a copy of the 2007 ER. This was going to be cross referenced with the Birth Death Marriage databases on offer to get all households with children born between a range of months.

1. Use the birth register to get a list of all children born between 09/97 to 08/98.
2. Use the mother/father field and search the marriage database to get their full name.
3. Get the 2007 ER and fill in the gaps with the 2007 ER.
4. Automate the task. Fucking hard.

192.com has the 2002 ER and the 2007 ER. Ancestry.com has the birth death and marriage database. Getting a hard copy of the data I can use locally however, proved to be a lot more tricky. Providing I got the data, I would then have to clean the data using the mailing preference list.

While it sounds a little long winded, it does actually work. Failing to automate the task – I gave up.
If anyone believes they can help, get in contact. We’ll be rich.

Along the way I discovered how easy credit card fraud is, but i’ll leave that to another time.

Getting a mailing list isn’t much of a bother. Call up a dozen mailing list companies and get some quotes. Ours were in the region of £60 per 1000 addresses to £200 per 1000 addresses. After much research, we decided to waste our money on the most expensive at £200 per thousand and some delivery costs. 30 fucking pounds to email over a tiny file?

Mailing list companies can be placed into two categories. Those that compile the data and those that buy the data wholesale and sell it at margin. They’ll all however, say they’re the former.

mailing list accuracy

All mailing lists have a major flaw. The data is usually collected via questionnaires, surveys, scam prize draws. Therefore, any data actually gathered is usually from a muppet. Someone who most probably isn’t interested in a luxury product. Time will tell whether i’m wrong.

Step 2.

Making the brochure.

I bought roughly £70 of pictures on istock.com and settled on a swatch. I then opened up Indesign and set up a strict 6 column grid layout. I then went to lynda.com and watched a 15hr tutorial video on indesign. I watched it nonstop. After becoming proficient at Indesign I set about designing. It took about 20hrs.

Step 3.

Printing

The brochure was printed:

5,000 16pp (216mm x 279.5mm) landscape

made up of:

4pp (216mm x 279.5mm) cover printed on 250gsm 9 lives

12pp (216mm x 279.5mm) pages printed on 100gsm 9 lives

Crease cover, fold, stitch & trim.

If you understand the above and arn’t in the print design industry then I feel sorry for you. The brochures were printed on 100% recycled paper and are US Letter in size.

Step 4.

Mail Fulfillment

The royal mail have a dozen different ways of posting something. It’ll drastically reduce your cost of mailing a large quantity. We decided to not bother and pay full whack.

The full cheap ass 3rd class mailsort rate would have cost £800 ~ for 4000 large letter 100g envelopes. The standard rate is £1680.

The reason why is because to get that discount you need to spend over £5000 with good ol consignia a year. You can opt to go with a mailing house but they’ll charge you £600 to insert and print your letterheads. To make it as un junk mail as possible all letterheads are hand signed and stamped instead of a scanned signature and franked or a PPI (postage paid impression).

That picture shows 500 brochures. It took 5 hours. When everything is fully bagged up, it’ll weigh 700kg.