The US president is just like us ...

Obama is visiting Darwin, Australia while Matt and I are visiting Port Douglas, Australia (which is just north of Cairns). Obama is the US first president to visit Darwin.
Pics: View from our hotel balcony and of the president's live speech to US / Aussie troops on the TV within our room. Plus, the front cover of today's newspaper.
Not to be political on the blog - it is just fun to have America come to us, and to hear Obama joke about learning strine and having crocodile insurance while visiting. It is also an interesting moment in US / Australian diplomacy.

Coke Marketing Strategy

Being that Matt is from the home of coke (Atlanta) and I'm, well, addicted to it, we took a particular interest in Coke's new marketing campaign. Coke cans have recently been labelled with people's names. It makes it fun when you find your name (no Lydia cans so far), find obscure friend's names (I was excited to be my childhood neighbor Brendan for the day), or realise you are far from home (heavy Asian name influence).

Coke must have realized that the *my name, my Coke* campaign was slightly selfish. Recently, "Share a drink with your ______ " cans have started sprouting up. To the chagrin of my work colleagues, I got really excited and touristy when this popped out of our vending machine:

In addition to the fact that Australian Cokes are made with pure sugar (corn syrup in the US), this is just one more thing to love.

Also - I'm writing this post from a Blogger app on my phone! Hopefully my new smartphone (more on that to come!) will help increase my *ahem* slightly lacking frequency of posts.