LMS Digital Media Launches New Media Services for High Performance Boat and Superyacht Builders

LMS Digital Media provides PR and Social Media Services to support high performance boat and superyacht builders in Turkey.

LMS Digital Media is now providing multimedia online PR services to the Turkish boating industry to support companies in reaching the industry media, leisure marine community and potential customers.

The service offers the most effective way of communicating company news by packaging video, audio, text, logos, photos, hyperlinks and related documents into an attractive, dynamic and easy to use online format.

Video included in an online multi media news release can be of a company representative presenting a new service, the launch of a superyacht or new high performance yacht to key audiences in the media as well as investors, customers and other interested parties.

“This new service allows customers to visually communicate all the aspects of their yachts including the thrill of the ride and the luxury of the interior thereby delivering a much richer and more dynamic experience for both the media and consumers” commented Jonathan Bowker founder of LMS Digital Media.

Mr. Bowker went on to say “We can now help boat yards and yacht builders in Turkey deliver their company’s message in a preferred format to thousands of industry journalists, bloggers and media contacts. The news releases are individually optimised to be more attractive to the leading search engines which dramatically increases the visibility almost immediately following dispatch and they are archived to extend the life of the message.”

Legal Marketing Services

LMS Digital Mediais a PR, SEO, new media strategist and communication service provider for the marine industry. The service packages company messages and shares them with industry journalists, bloggers, and influencers worldwide via the social web. A dynamic blend of traditional PR and a more progressive, conversational method, our Social Media Releases open doors and engage readers with multimedia content shared via Google News and Social Media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Linked and more. All releases are almost instantly visible in Google search results following dispatch. Maritime Media is a brand name of LMS Digital Media.

via pitchengine.com

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

Luxury sea and land models kick off London Boat Show

Luxury yacht maker Sunseeker has teamed up with performance car marque Caterham to provide the ultimate millionaire’s exhibit on the first day of the London International Boat Show.

 

Sunseeker debuted its £7.5m (€8.35) Predator 108 Special Edition yacht January 8, revealing an unusual twist in the yacht’s on-board garage – a Caterham Seven. The lightweight British sports car fits snugly into the garage area at the stern of the Predator, usually reserved for a small sports boat. Manufacturers believe the package is perfect for those looking to make the “transition from sea to land at glamorous locations, such as the harbours of Monaco, St Tropez and Cannes.”

“Our two companies have more in common than one might think at first, despite the disparity in vehicle size,” said Caterham Cars Managing Director, Ansar Ali. “Surely any Sunseeker owner would relish the chance to match their experience on the waves with the ultimate drive on the roads.”

The 108 ft (23.9m) Predator is the largest boat ever displayed inside the ExCeL centre and is capable of accommodating up to eight guests and four crew members – as well as a classic sports car. It has a range of 450 nautical miles and a top speed of 45 knots. Eighteen other global debuts are to be made at the show which ends January 17, including the Targa 58 Gran Tourismo, the 72-foot Princess 72 Motor yacht and the Discovery 50 Catamaran.

via independent.co.uk

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

Shakira in Turkish Barbers – Gocek

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Shakira in Turkish Barbers – Gocek

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Home wanted for Turkish Bear on Twitpic

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Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

I don’t like spiders and snakes

First I was bitten by a spider, then I was stung by a bee. Both attacks were unprovoked and totally unjustified. They came within a week and 12 inches of each other.

As a matter of fact, I was trying to save the bee from drowning, but had not recognized it as an enemy; it was in poor light and I thought it was a harmless sort of bug so I used my finger to lift it out of the water, my typing finger.

For years we have been telling tourists about the snakes and scorpions hereabout. That the small colored snakes are poisonous but very shy and that the big black ones are harmless and also very shy. We say that in a two-week holiday you would be very lucky to see a snake.

This year we told a lady tourist that stuff on a Monday and on the Tuesday one of the big black ones dropped out of a tree and landed on the terrace table in front of her. We heard the scream from 400 meters away; it quite spoilt her breakfast.

We have been told by reps about tourists who seriously complain about the presence of creepy-crawlies in or around their holiday cottages. What do they want us to do, fumigate the whole coast? I say we breed more nasties and frighten that type of tourist back to where they came from.

We have heard tourists complain about the noise of a neighbor’s chickens, which is ironic, because chickens kill scorpions. We are thinking of breeding scorpions ready for our full-scale war on Jeep and quad safaris. I’m also trying to design a snake catapult, but I’m not getting very far, there are technical difficulties. (Perhaps a snake longbow?)

According to the Internet, all spiders are poisonous, but some more than others. We generally dismiss the Turkish ones as harmless. Don’t you believe it! The one that attacked me was as big as a Buick and packed a wallop like a steam hammer. If the snake catapult doesn’t work, then I’m going for a spider version.

There is a Web-site-forum thingy on which some wimp from around here was reporting his scorpion sting; he was rushed to hospital, had hours of treatment, etc. Listen. If you are between 13 and 70 and in reasonable health, here is what you do. Eat one each of every pill in your medicine cabinet and drink a whole lot of gin with tonic. You are allowed to cry a little and curse as much as you want, but you won’t die and the whole thing will be over in a day, unlike a spider wound. Of course I am speaking from experience.

Do I feel persecuted? Well actually, no. These attacks have been over many years. Mosquitoes don’t bother me too much; the ankle-biters have been fairly moderate in their assaults, and the recent bee sting was the first for perhaps five years.

Now, broadening the subject somewhat: Have you heard about the person who bought a pot plant (or cactus) and (cutting a long story short) it turned out to have a nest of tarantula spiders (or scorpions) in it? Please, don’t pass the story on without checking its truth. Google “urban legends” and you’ll find that the amazing and scary event which happened to a friend of your friend almost certainly never happened at all.

Funny end to my attacks: I had to write instructions to my bank in Europe to send me money; they take a first instruction by e-mail but require a written and signed paper version. Fine, I was to get on with that after the weekend. The bee sting, which I explained was on my typing finger occurred, on a Monday morning. I was able to type out a letter, but when I came to sign it, my signature looked like a plate of burnt spaghetti. I did the best I could after practicing for a while and then posted the letter, but first I e-mailed the bank to explain that my signature was not entirely accurate. Brain wave! I then photographed my swollen finger opposite the non-swollen one of the opposite hand and sent them that.

Yes thanks, the money came through on Thursday.

John Laughland – AKA The Old Groaner

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

Chickens in a Buick

In a field not too far from our country cottage sits a Buick. I believe it’s a Riviera from about 1950; it was originally royal blue (if the Americans acknowledge that color). It looks to be in a not-bad condition; it has four wheels, one in each corner, and an engine up front.

It is home to a dozen or so chickens, and I must say that they seem well pleased with their home, though they are often disturbed during weekends by children. The children seem to be oblivious to the guano which covers the seats, the gear shift and the steering wheel as they fantasize their car chases.

In another field at the far side of the valley, there is another four-wheeled chicken house; it was a bread van until about five years ago. The chickens to whom that is home have the advantage of a bulkhead between their quarters and the cab, and so the weekend “drivers” have the advantage of a guano-free cab.

This recycling of vehicles is a good thing in my opinion and should be encouraged. There used to be a fishing boat up near Bozburun that had the sawn-off top of a car as its cabin. Conversely we have elsewhere seen a ship’s cabin, also sawn off, used as the ticket office in a parking lot. Of course it is very common on the tourist coast to see whole or half small boat hulls used as bars in pubs and cafes. Somewhere up the coast sits a large gullet several hundred meters from the sea. It too looks to be in very good condition. It is a restaurant.

So I think it is fair to say that Turks are very good at recycling. Commercial quantities of vegetable oil and olive oil are sold in cans which hold about 18 liters. Around here the most common brand seems to be “Balcı,” so we have adopted that word as generic for those cans. “Let’s use a balgi-can.” The cans are very widely used. I suppose the most common use is as flower pots; we ourselves have a few, suitably painted, and they are fine for about three years, by which time they are too rusted. Our neighbors use them for that purpose but don’t “suitably paint” them — one coat of lime wash is deemed sufficient.

Another use is in the building industry. Their tops cut off, they are used as sand, cement, water or concrete-carrying buckets, usually born on the shoulders of the laborers but sometimes a simple wooden handle is attached across the top to aid carrying (Absolutely full of concrete such a can will weigh some 40 kilos, no light load to be carried up a ladder).

The cans share a use with car tires: filled with concrete, they make parasol bases.

With both ends cut off and the body of the can opened out we have two sizes of roofing shingle, perhaps not for one’s main abode but certainly for one’s chicken shed (pending the demise of the family car).

Another not-uncommon use of the ubiquitous balgi-can in villages such as ours is as sacrificial formwork for concrete pillars. Both the top and bottom are removed and the cans are built up with concrete infill, one by one, until the column reaches the desired height. Not surprisingly the column seldom achieves true verticality, the “joints” between the cans always leak, and the result is a terrible mess both structurally and aesthetically. Sometimes the column may be given the cursory splash of lime wash in order to half obliterate the word “Balci,” but not always; the villagers seem unconcerned. I’m guessing that the manufacturers of the oil are well pleased with all their free advertising.

In towns where street sweepers are employed by the local authority, those good men are armed with a reed broom and a balgi-can which is cut to approximately dust-pan shape and to which a long wooden handle is attached. Super!

Oil drums can become stoves in Turkey. We once found a bean tin with a handle affixed to make a drinking mug, and near us a neighbor has a dead fuel tanker as his water reservoir; I think he must have cleaned and purged it before commissioning it.

Now, I’ve used the word recycling and opined that Turks are good at it. Perhaps I should have said “re-using,” because Turks are not yet very good at recycling as we know it in Europe. Yes, some will collect drinks cans, which presumably go for re-smelting, but generally speaking, all waste, from dead animals to dead car parts, goes into the same bin. The collectors of the drinks cans do very well without rummaging around in those bins, the majority of drinks cans having been thrown to the sides of roads.

In Germany waste must be placed in appropriate bins: glass, plastic, food, paper or metals. To put waste into the incorrect bin is considered a mortal sin, and I suspect that if caught a transgressor may be shot on the spot.

Die Frau recently had a present from a friend returning from India. It was a very attractive jacket and one would think it to be made from conventional, perhaps even natural, material. However a label inside explained that it was in fact made from recycled plastic shopping bags.

On the east coast of Africa, thousands of flip flops are collected from beaches and recycled somehow as handbags. I used to recycle floating flip flops when I was at sea. I would fish out individual floating ones and typically would have a pair of matching ones of similar size once a month. I am sure that the Mediterranean bears the best harvest in the world. Forget the English Channel.

So please let us remember these things, readers. Let’s have Turkey recycle along European lines, and let’s have those picturesque villages in the Cotswolds or the Black Forest brighten themselves up with a few classic cars as chicken houses.

by

John Laughland – AKA The Old Groaner

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

Enough to turn Salter in his grave

[THE OLD GROANER] Enough to turn Salter in his grave

Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not at all sure that Salter is actually in his grave, but he doesn’t seem to be around much anymore, which must be a load off many minds in the building industry in Scotland.

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Alan Salter was known to most tradesmen in the country as “The Beast,” but let me start from scratch. I think he was a plumber by trade, but he worked his way up from that miserable trade to be a site agent and eventually to be an area manager of one of the most successful housing development companies in the country. The owner of that company went from strength to strength and now owns probably the only successful motorcycling manufacturer left in Britain. Now, to be fair, Salter was not wholly unreasonable; he simply demanded perfection in all trades. He was not so much a perfectionist when it came to legal issues, human rights, fair trade and all those namby-pamby and sissy issues, but don’t you dare splodge a drop of paint on the parquet floor!

Please excuse the digression, but I actually knew the original beast, “The Beast of Brompton”; he was an army provost-sergeant famous not only as a strict disciplinarian but also for his stupidity; he was once heard to instruct the guards, “Nobody answer the phone unless it rings.”

Salter appreciated good workmanship and paid accordingly, he remains my best argument for the capitalist system; work well and you get paid well, work poorly and you are “down the road.” If you have got the idea, then I will move on, move on to this valley of ours.

Prioritizing safety

I often fantasize as to what Salter would say were he to holiday in Turkey. In my opinion he would not last, or did not last, a week. His lowest priority when I knew him was safety, but given the level of that priority in our particular location, then poor Alan would not have survived a day or two. He would have seen heaps of timber shuttering with hundreds of protruding nails and working amongst those timbers men wearing flip-flops or old sports shoes. He may also have seen the state of what passes for scaffolding in these parts, heaps of tables and chairs or lengths of tree branches lashed together.

Had he been with me 10 years ago, he would have witnessed a shop fitter in Marmaris who was cutting aluminum sections to form windows. He was using a disk cutter and was without protective goggles; when he made his cuts he would aim the disc at the correct spot, close his eyes, turn his head away and then make the cut. I didn’t stay around long enough to count his fingers. We had a welder work for us once who used sunglasses (faux Rayburn if I remember well) to do his work. His eyes were fine, but he had a most horrible skin burn for weeks.

Had Salter missed the safety breaches, he may have had the misfortune to have passed a building site such as the one which I passed yesterday, and there seen so-called bricklayers erecting something which they no doubt would call a “wall” but which most Europeans would nominate a rather untidy pile of bricks with some gray splodgy stuff separating them, the nearly vertical structure possibly forming a part of a dwelling, or maybe something far more substantial.

I will now cut to the chase. Building standards in Turkey, well at least around here, are simply horrible. I have not witnessed more terrible standards of workmanship since I was in a certain Arab country about 40 years ago. That country now has a Hilton, which I pray, for the sake of the “A” list of celebrities, was built by better craftsmen than were around those years ago.

In England, every reasonable-sized city, and many large towns, has a building college to which trainee tradesmen or potential tradesmen are sent for a basic education in their own chosen craft and building in general. Organizations such as The Cement and Concrete Association run short courses to educate our lads.

The blind leading the blind

They also put out free little “Man on the job” illustrated booklets, which find their way into the hands of our site workers. It seems to me that hereabouts anyone can try his hand at any trade and there is no way for him to be educated to a level of competency; he learns from others, a classic case of the blind leading the blind.

And another thing… (am I starting to rant?) they all smoke, so why not waste a match or two burning the cement bags at day’s end? If you leave overused shuttering for locals to harvest, then please, lads, please de-nail the crop. I do hate to see kids clomping home in tears with lengths of 4×2 nailed to their feet or knees.

I will avoid being boring by going into too much technical detail, but I can briefly touch on the quality of concrete. It is a certain scientific fact that concrete should be placed and vibrated into its shuttering within 40 minutes of water being added to the mix. It really doesn’t do to mix it, go to lunch and simply add more water an hour later! It is not marmalade they are making.

Now things would not be quite so bad if the lack of training and skills stopped with the workforce; unfortunately, however, the management level of the industry seems to suffer nearly as badly. We were once talking to an expat who had recently had several bungalows and a house built in a small compound. I asked him why the bungalows had been built with the ground floor some one-and-a-half meters above ground level. He explained that, rather than build foundations into the ground, his had been built out of the ground so that in the event of an earthquake the shock waves would simply pass underneath the structure, leaving it undamaged.

I asked him where on earth that science had come from and he said that his site engineer had explained it to him. No amount of incredulous stuttering and spluttering from me could convince him of the nonsense of the notion.

07 January 2010, Thursday

JOHN LAUGHLAND  FETHİYE

via todayszaman.com

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

[The Old Groaner] You say tomato, I say tomato

For one glorious day we had a tomato tree on our front terrace. The tree had a girth of perhaps two meters, a spread of about six meters and it stood some 10 meters tall. Believe me, it was beautiful with its large dark green leaves and fine crop of dazzling red tomatoes. We have photographs.

Now let me explain. We have a Turkish friend by the name of Can. He is the director of the local library, but he also owns a big parcel of land with a goodly number of olive trees and four large greenhouses in which he grows tomatoes year round. Every year Can gifts us something like 20 kilograms of tomatoes; they usually come in large bread baskets. Last year he delivered the fruit on a day when we were out. He told us later that he had waited for an hour, expecting us to be not far away, but after that hour gave up on our early return.

I think it may have been a day when he had little else to do, so Can spent a further hour tying the tomatoes to the lower branches of the old mulberry tree which graces our front terrace so well. He used thin black thread which he found in our sewing kit we happened to have left out, having spent the previous day mending things. After completing his work, he left.

When we returned from our day out, the sight of that tree stopped us in our tracks.

I am reluctant to criticize the Creator for his design of the standard mulberry tree, but really its design cannot compare with the sight that greeted us that day. Just beautiful.

For several years we had been hiding an earlier gift from Can Bey, one less appreciated. He had been given an oil painting which was a little too risqué to hang in his home and a lot too risqué to hang in the town library. It was of a couple of naked young ladies; ladies best described as statuesque. One was squatting on the floor and one was standing nearby. They were a fine pair of ladies and both appeared to be of kind disposition.

Now then, we had no objection to the subject matter whatsoever; there are perhaps a dozen scantily dressed ladies scattered around the walls of our house, some painted by friends but many prints from the likes of Klimt and Beardsley; the truth is that the gift from Can, some one meter by 0.7 meters, was poorly executed. It was verging on kitsch. We hid it behind a cupboard but were prepared to hurriedly hang it over a much smaller painting were Can to visit.

After a few years, we supposed that Can may have forgotten about the painting, so when a friend who ran a weekly auction of antiques and artwork asked had we anything to sell, we thought about the ladies.

So kitsch was the picture that we contrived this: He would announce that the proceeds for the sale of the masterpiece would go towards animal welfare and that the successful purchaser could, if he wished [“IF HE WISHED !”] donate it back for the next auction. It worked! We sold it in at least five consecutive auctions and probably raised a total of about TL 150, which we gave to the local doggie home.

The racket may well have gone on for another month or two, but it ground to a miserable halt when a lady who didn’t quite get the idea won the bidding but took the picture home. She told us later that her husband hated the picture, so he burnt it!

Back to tomatoes, I’m reminded now of my very first Turkish crop.

My arrival in Turkey was by yacht. I sailed into Bodrum harbor one day and two days later came the weekly market. My diet then was very simple, consisting of one chicken döner ashore every day supplemented by bread, cheese, tomatoes, eggs and potatoes on the boat.

I went ashore on market day to buy the necessary vittles for the coming week. At the first veggie stall I saw beautiful tomatoes, so I pointed to them and ordered “One kilo lütfen.”

The chap looked a bit startled and said, “On kilo?” I said, “Yes”; but again he asked “ON kilo?” and I replied, a mite exasperated by now, “YES ONE!”

The stallholder started filling a plastic bag and by the time it was half full, I was beginning to think that perhaps one kilogram was too much. When that bag was full, he started on another and it dawned on me that I’d made a mistake. If I remember well, I walked away with four large carrier bags stuffed with my 10 kilograms of ripe fruit. I could barely carry them.

Back on board I found that I had bought far too much to be able to comfortably stow them in the galley, so I left the majority in the cockpit and determined that I would gobble them down as fast as possible. I ate a couple of the fruits, a piece of cheese and rowed to the shore and went to the jazz cafe.

I returned later that night slightly the worse for drink and fell asleep.

I will not tell in detail the night’s adventure; suffice to say that the wind got up to something like gale force, boats dragged anchors, we were all swinging around pitching and yawing, and all captains were awake and jumping around doing captainy things until dawn.

A little later I aroused myself from a cockpit doze and found myself ankle-deep in approximately 9.9 kilograms of tomato ketchup on the cockpit floor.

There went my first Turkish lesson. “On” means 10.

For the week following I was, deservedly, the laughingstock of the anchorage, but I was dethroned the following market day when another single-hander bought a kilogram of bay leaves. Oh sure, he had no trouble carrying it back to his boat, but where on a 27 footer do you stow a sack of that size?

By the way, when I was halfway through writing this piece, Die Frau brought me my midday snack. It was a cheese and tomato sandwich.

Good bread, reasonable cheese and possibly the best tomatoes in the world.

John Laughland – Fethiye

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker

The Shouting Hill

On Sundays at the shouting hill 

we see them 

out there across the wire 

each week a little older 

and though the gap remains unchanged 

I seem to see our loved ones 

grow more distant

For six days they stand sepia and silent 

froze solemn on our mantle shelf 

but on Sundays at the shouting hill 

they are in colour 

though perhaps a little faded 

as they faintly call their love 

across the wire

by

John Laughland

 

Posted via web from Jonathan Bowker