![]() ![]() Though not the complex Pac-Man game of today, it was so popular that Google decided to continue decorating its homepage when the occasion arose. The Google logo remained unadorned until 2000, when they asked their intern at the time (now head webmaster Dennis Hwang) to create a Doodle for Bastille Day. In 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin went to Burning Man and placed a small stick figure behind the second “o”, letting users know they were out of the office and deep in the desert. The idea of swapping out Google's logo for a “doodle” started before the company even incorporated. This is pretty indicative of Google’s Doodle philosophy: simple, fun, and a bit of history and personality thrown in for good measure. ![]() The description of the Doodle talked about senior Google designer Marcin Wichary’s childhood growing up watching his dad fix video game machines, and the “geopolitical” reach of this simple game at the time. The iconic Google letters were configured into the classic narrow passageways with neon dots, and when users clicked “insert coin” they could revisit their arcade days and play a round (or two or three or five) of Pac-Man. On May 21, 2010, Googlers were greeted with the first-ever interactive Google Doodle: a celebration of 30 years of Pac-Man. Just maybe, Pakistani officials wanted my fellow festivalgoers to join the clamor for their country’s “king of fruits.” Just maybe, they succeeded. Just maybe, the mangoes’ juicy bliss could accomplish what diplomacy has not yet done. All it lacks, says Trade Minister Azmat Mahmud, is USDA approval.I started to grasp the ulterior motive of the trays of luscious fruit arrayed before this Washington crowd. But there’s a Department of Agriculture requirement that all Pakistani mangoes enter the United States at the port of Houston, where the fruit is irradiated to USDA specifications.Pakistan has responded by building an irradiation facility in Karachi. Compare that with the mangoes coming from Mexico last year, worth $400 million. Ambassador Masood Khan wants Americans to have greater access to what he calls “the king of fruits” – not just any mangoes, but the royal varieties of Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces.Currently Pakistan exports less than $1 million in fruity gold to the United States annually. And if either diplomat was bothered by it, neither let on.That may be because the mango festival had a deeper objective. And there would be handshakes. So I decided to let the stars of the festival speak – or maybe stick – for themselves. I was about to have a pull-aside (diplomatic-speak for a brief meeting on the margins of another event) with two Pakistan officials. Come to the mango festival at the Pakistan Embassy, I had been assured, and taste mangoes as you’ve never tasted them before.Much like other festivalgoers crowded around the trays of ambrosia-like fruit, I was alternating between juicy bites and exclamations of utter deliciousness. The problem was those sticky hands. The sweet juices running down my hands from the orangy-yellow Pakistani mangoes were just what the invitation had promised. ![]()
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