Vuvuzelas

If you have watched the World Cup you are familiar with vuvuzelas. They are those long long trumpet like instruments that produce that annoying sound during the matches. You know... they sound like you are getting uncomfortably close to a thousand bee hives or to at least three hundred dying elephants.

If you thought that Hello Kitty products were stupid, the vuvuzela opens a new chapter in that area. All thanks to a guy called Neil van Schalkwyk, 37, who hated the world because nobody could pronounce his name three times in a row. He wanted to get even and invented this meter-long plastic horn.

He was a professional soccer player when he was a teen in Cape Town and it is then when he paid attention to a tin can trumpet that was played to celebrate a goal (he only scored one goal in his life and that could be the reazon for the hate). As he was working in a plastics factory, he decided to mass produce the so called instrument. Vuvuzela comes from the Zulu word for "shower", due to its appearance.

The rest is history. He started mass production and his product has made it into the World Cup stadiums and Mr. Schalkwyk has already been approached by people from Russia and Brazil to have enough product for their International Sports Events to come. People who attend the matches claim that its sound is a disaster as it ruins the stadium atmosphere, disturbs the players concentration (that is one of the reasons Mexico lost against Argentina, otherwise the final score makes no sense) and causes hearing damage.

A vuvuzela costs 30 South African rand, that is like $4.00 US. But not all vuvuzelas are the same. 75% of the so called instruments sold are knock-offs. The one produced by Neil is the "official FIFA approved" one. Mr. Schalkwyk claims that you will get "vuvuzela lip" if you don't use one of his versions. He has made 7 million of them out of which one million is profit (I guess the rest is...taxes?, because we know its not labor).

Between the unhappy people (that is, all of us) is a lady called Yvonne Mayer, 29, who apparently left unable to speak or to eat for two days after she blew her vuvuzela too hard in the streets of Cape Town and has taken him to court seeking damages. Now the new and improved version takes stride toward consumer safety. The new vuvuzela peaks at 13 decibels lower than the original one and will break if used as a weapon as its made out of three pieces. The sound can reach 130 decibels, which is the sound you hear when somebody operates a chainsaw.

If you did not get your vuvuzela, don't worry. You still can get a similar sound at the Apple Store as there is an App for that, no kidding.