The Guinness book of records has been published for more than forty years. It used to be a useful compendium of facts about nature and the noble achievements of mankind; nowadays it is mainly bollocks. The longest ear hair, the most glasses balanced on the chin, the longest string of dirty dishes washed with one bottle of detergent.
Hang on, that last one sounds interesting. The record was set in the Philippines in 1999 when 8,754 plates were washed and placed end to end over a distance of 2.2 kilometres. Now that’s what I call an achievement.
Enter the proud city of Pattaya. Ever keen to organise events which will have zero impact on tourist numbers whilst providing copy for the local papers, the deputy major announced that a record breaking attempt would be held from the 26-30th April. Also, please welcome Unilever, who are going to supply the single 875cc bottle of Sunlight detergent which will be used to wash the planned 10,000 dishes.
Not as exciting as an ear hair challenge, but your fearless correspondent was determined to capture the sights, sounds and smells of thousands of dirty dishes getting the Sunlight treatment. So she who must be obeyed was tasked with finding out more about the event (like exactly where and exactly when). And she found out nothing. She even rang the hotel that was meant to be directly involved (perhaps providing the dirty dishes), and they knew nothing about it.
Filed under another cocked-up local event and forgotten; until this morning when I saw this:
Apparently we were there because “Sunlight attempts the world’s longest line of washed plates”. Huh? You mean all that happened was that a gang of hapless workers had spent hours lining up ten thousand plates? And this was to be some sort of admired world record? Apparently so, because on the beach, there was this:
It went on for a couple of kilometres, with occasional counting markers:
Until it ended up here:
10,000 slightly sandy plates, which looked suspiciously brand new rather than washed. But never mind, back to the stage where the chairman of Unilever Thailand was saying wonderful things about Sunlight washing-up liquid. Sadly, his Dutch-English accent meant that the assembled Thais had no idea what he was on about.
Then Mr. Benjie Yap from Unilever told us that the long line of plates proved Sunlight’s efficacy in cleaning dishes; although he didn’t go as far as to say that these particular dishes had ever seen any Sunlight.
Finally we had the Pattaya mayor, taking time off from doing fuck all about the mess that is Thappraya road, and telling us what a great tourist attraction it was to have the beach littered with 10,000 plates at 10:30 in the morning (i.e. not great at all); although he phrased it differently.
What a completely pointless waste of time. But I took the photos, so you have to suffer too.
Comments 🔗
2010-05-13| Pete saysSeems to me to be a futile excercise, washing clean plates. Wouldn’t take much Sunlight at all to do all those as they look fairly new, looking at your pictures. And the Major came out and endorsed it as well?? Tut tut. Anyway, I can spell ‘retroactive’ 5 .. 4 .. 3.. 2 ..
2010-05-13| genuinej saysMajor? Surely some mistake.
2010-05-14| Spike saysIt’s an anagram. Or a mistake.
2010-05-14| Pete saysAre you sure it wasn’t an acronym? Of course an anagram of “deputy major” is ‘rum typo, jade’ or even ‘ready to jump’.
An anagram of retroactive is ‘vice to err at’.