Hard Rock Cafe

Had lunch on New Year's Day with a couple of girlfriends and their families at Hard Rock Cafe. They had a 20th anniversary promotion...Eat all you can buffet for $20 nett per adult. Free for kids under 6. Lots of entertainment too... there was popcorn, candy floss, a bouncy castle, a seriously amazing balloon sculptor - the boy refused to get me a fish and asked for a gun instead... so I had to shamelessly join the line to get  myself the fish (".) - and games like tikam-tikam and Q&A.We got something like $55 worth of vouchers from playing those games.

I haven't been back at the cafe for ages! They were once 'my' client. This was 10 years ago..... and the reason why I'm on their contact list for promotions such as this $20 lunch on New Year's Day.  I really like working with them. The same cannot be said about the @#*$(@*& IDIOTIC ART DIRECTOR in my agency responsible for producing creatives for this account. Still, it was fun, partying till the door close and then staying some more for a photoshoot in their premises before bouncing across the road to Orchard Towers for the biggest 5am breakfast one can get at Denny's 24hr cafe. Oh, there was always other interesting propositions along the way that kept me bemused.

And if we travel back another 10 years, to when Hard Rock Cafe first open its doors, you'd find me queuing up with my friends, all dressed up to look older than we are, to get in. It's impossible to get it after dinner - because then you had show your ID...and so we got in early, bought the cheapest dinner on the menu and then waited... and always, uncannily exactly when the jug full of bendy black straws with tea ( from long island?!?)  arrives to quench your thirst, the bouncer arrives, demands to see your ID and then throws you out.

That bouncer, the same one that threw me out 20 years ago, the same one whom I worked closely with 10 years ago, I saw him again on this New Year's Day.

Then I wondered... what has changed? A lot and yet not.