Knight of the Realm
I’m now in Singapore for our Regional Creative Conference with all the creatives in BBH Singapore, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The newly knighted Sir John Hegarty flew in to meet us. He is such a nice guy. And typical Brit, try to downplay the honor of being the first one knighted for his contribution in Advertising. His official title is Knight of the Realm. Realm is an old word for Kingdom. And the queen put the sword on his shoulder and all that shebang.
I told Sir John that in the Philippines, you can be a Knight in McDonald’s. He was curious what it was. I said, well, all you have to do is order a value meal and the cashier will call you “Sir”. or “Ma’am-sir.”
It is amazing how enthusiastic he still is after all this years. In many ways he is like a child, and that is still hard to imagine with his wrinkled face and British accent.
He is very inspiring. My colleagues are all very inspiring. We were asked to prepare a presentation each about anything we find interesting, in Pecha Kucha style. Pecha Kucha started in Japan where creative people from different fields (started by architects) are given a venue to strut their stuff. You have to present 20 slides at 20 secs each. My colleagues have made amazing stuff… especially the writers. One has published a lot of quirky graphic design books, one illustrates comics, one did animation, and I paint (but didnt present this). There were interesting stuff all around, from how customization is going big time in the next 25 years, to a silly japanese inventor who invented the plastic pump we usually use to draw water/oil out (he did this when he was a child) to cellphone with watch straps to erotic potions.
I presented “How to swear in Filipino.” That got their attention. But actually it is the history of the Barong Tagalog, peppered with lots of beautiful pix of the Philippines (cleverly disguised tourism ad, I must say). I am sleepy now so I’ll tell you more about this next time. This is interesting because I stumbled upon a lot of trivia while researching on this topic, such as we are one of the ancient civilizations of the world, and we had advanced hydraulics engineering, astronomy, mathematics, arts, weapons, international trade, and gold mining way before Spain was even a country. And they had the gall to call us indios.
John Heg liked my presentation because he never knew that a shirt could have so much background. Steve Elrick said the same (he said he didn’t understand it before why men would wear those shirts in Ad congress). Of course, they are being polite and gave positive comments to everyone who presented (coz the presentations are quite good). But during lunch, John Heg made a reference back to the barong
and Steve-o mentioned it after lunch, so meaning may recall. Happy naman ako.
So that’s my experience on the first trip to Singapore. It’s the Great Singapore Sale and I haven’t shopped a single thing. I didn’t even have time to go around. But I was rubbing elbows with a real British Knight.
