Tag Archives: inuit

Polar bears: in advertising and reality (but don’t eat them they’re poisonous)

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While I was travelling through Europe earlier this year, I couldn’t help but notice that polar bears featured in all sorts of advertisements. From strong and fearsome warriors, to cute and cuddly fluff toys, they are used to sell a diverse range of products from cars to mints to light bulbs. They are definitely not shown to be stinky or poisonous to eat (more on the reality below)!

No doubt Coca Cola has been most successful at combining a product with a polar bear. First introduced in 1922, the polar bears are recurring characters and fundamental elements in Coke folklore. It’s grown into a fully fledged Arctic affair; with Coke pledging more than US$40 million to support the native creatures of the harsh far north.

This is the latest interpretation of the Coke polar bear family which has screened this year on television. The polar cubs are a later addition to the family:

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Reflection: One keeper, many souls

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According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

By Annie Dillard.

I don’t know much about this yet, but the idea of six or seven souls sounds almost overbearing. With just one soul, you can feel enough love, and in times of sorrow, too much pain. Just a thought.

I do love this carving of an Inuit Soul in the picture below. It has a fluidity to it. It is as if after rough waves had crashed onto the stone countless times, a soul had woken up from all the noise and pushed its face out for the world to see.

Depiction of an Inuit Soul in carving. Source and for more information: East Greenland tourism website

An Inuit without the fur and sealskins?

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They say that Greenland and Denmark have opposing weather patterns – a mild winter in Denmark means a freezing one in Greenland.

The day that I arrived in Denmark (after a looooong 41 hour trip) it was a balmy 8 degrees celsius. That’s beautiful and fresh when it’s a clear sunny day – and mild by Danish winter standards. So yes, I have to prepare for colder days!

For my birthday which was shortly after touchdown, my dear Danish family gave me some winter gear to get ready for Greenlandic weather. I’m wearing it all in this video:

The thickest, heaviest jacket I’d ever seen. It’s got some fake fur on the hood, which is good to repel the snow from your face in blizzard conditions. Underneath the hood, you’ll see I’m wearing another hat – a fur one I had only previously imagined on Russians drinking vodka in freezing cold Siberian weather.

To protect my body, I’m also wearing a very chunky Norwegian wool sweater, kind of like what Mr Darcy wears in Bridget Jones Diary; a merino wool long sleeve; and a thermal singlet. Ski pants to go over normal pants and thermals if outside. A pair of big fat boots, worn with two pairs of socks in the coldest times.

When it’s really hit below freezing, I’m told I also need two pairs of gloves to keep my hands warm – a normal woollen one, and a pair of ski mittens. Mittens are warmer than gloves because the fingers help to generate warm air inside the space. It’s also because gloves have more surface area than mittens.

It was a day of learning – one thing for sure – it’s gonna be hard doing a walkabout with so much on!

It’s official, my workmates are crazy

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It's official, my workmates are crazy.

Titled: Tanny’s first expedition!
One of the larrikin posts that my sweet colleague created.

For the past two weeks, my fellow marketing/web colleagues at UTS International had beavered away at a top-level secret project. All was revealed when I suddenly discovered that I was now the proud focus of a ridiculously funny farewell page on Facebook. It’s called Tawny Port: Publishing Superstar.

Please let me add again, I have nothing to do with it.

Do go see it – It’s full of inappropriate seal jokes and incredibly well-photoshopped images of myself in traditional Inuit costumes, fur jackets, and so on. There’s also a photo of the iconic brutalist UTS building surrounded by snow. I’m going to set up a campus over there, according to the caption.

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