After a few months of treading water, SWAP is coming back online, February 2011 and world records are about to tumble!
First, the good news. After an extended period of acute landlord trouble, we are currently looking positively at land and hope to start building our new Headquarters and offices sometime in February, 2011.
Secondly we are pleased to announce our first Ambassador for 2011. Please put your hands together for Mr World Records himself! Alastair Galpin is a real go-getter Kiwi, (born in South Africa actually) who is visiting for a recon visit for some exciting activities we are planning on doing on-island here – Q3 or Q4.
You gotta hand it to him, the second most capped Guinness World Records of the decade (2000-2009) Alastair has just returned from a successful challenge in New York’s Times Square where he, along with his hand-shaking Kiwi challenge partner and a competing team from Nepal, smashed the World record for the longest hand-shake ever – a whopping 33 hours of pain! One News link. The main challenge website: www.shakinghistory.com
Our aim in bringing Alastair to Samoa is to give him a first-hand [Get it? First hand] experience of the Samoan culture and people, prior to establishing a series of promotional world record attempts to be held in Samoa, later this year. When he gets here we will be introducing him to some of the movers and shakers in Samoa, who are sure to clamour over each other to get him to join in with their village to help break as many world records as possible all downunder in Paradise.
Our goal of course, is to get it all out on the Internet and Samoa engaging with the public on the Internet. We want to let people know that Samoans are very much alive and well after the Tsunami and that they’re the world’s best at . . . well what is the world’s record for the most number of boys up a coconut tree at once? We might also generate some interest in venturing forth to Paradise, but that is all in the future.
Alastair arrives for his “recon” visit at the end of February. If you’ve got any ideas of what he can do or how YOUR village might want to get involved, let us know and we’ll forward the suggestions on to him. Expect an announcement from a senior leader in Samoa, with all the rules for entry, very soon!
A tip though when you meet him here – don’t even think of shaking his hand (He’s da bomb and you might be doing it for a V-E-R-Y long time) . . . may the best village win!
UPDATE: March 2011
Unfortunately Alastair has pulled out of working with us in Samoa. Apparently Guiness World Records instructed him not to work for us. Ouch!! One of our guys tried to persuade Alastair to come anyway but with no joy so clearly something big has gone down between the two of them. We tried to get to the bottom of it all but GWR won’t tell us what they told Alastair and Alastair just pulled out the night before the flight to Samoa so at the end of the day we don’t know what really happened.
With an appointment arranged for Alastair to meet the PM here, airline tickets wasted with a “no-show” and a major marketing programme built around Alastair’s involvement blown to smitherines we don’t think very highly of either GWR or Alastair at the moment!
To our thinking it’s extraordinary that Guiness World Records would dump on the guy who recommended them to us in the first place, and then even more extraordianry that a supposedly professional guy who undertakes to come to Samoa pulls out the night before the flight, with a “Dear John email!” Whew, what an idiotic industry this world record thing is!
The silver lining to this disaster is that we’ve saved anything from £4,000.00 to £20,000.00 depending on what we decided to do on the day.
“I am not permitted to discuss Guinness World Records (TM) with you, as I have been firmly told.” Alastiar Galpin.
“Regarding Guinness World Records ?, I was told very firmly that I am not
> permitted to help you by communicating with the company on your behalf, or
> acting on your behalf.
We thinks that this sux.
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