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| Map of Gold Coast |
G is for Getting Around
April A-Z Challenge
I drove all the way to the shopping mall today, all by myself.
Don’t laugh, it took me fifty-five fudging minutes.
I got there the 'old-school' way, via looking at a map and drawing on it with a Texta.
What’s a map? Well… it’s a really big piece of paper with a lot of squiggly lines and street names and was used in the olden days to find one’s way around.
There's a picture of one such artifact above.
When we first arrived on the Gold Coast, Scotto installed a GPS in my car but I swear the bitch in it is trying to kill me.
Not only is she very terse and snooty sounding, but she keeps attempting to lure me on to the motorway where many threatening cars whiz along at death defying speeds and it’s a place I like to avoid at all costs.
One day, while Scotto was filling up his car at a petrol station, I sneaked in and accosted the old man behind the counter.
“Don’t suppose you have any maps of the Gold Coast?” I asked in a hushed voice. No need for the young bearded hipster standing behind me to hear what I was saying.
The old guy stared at me for a second then broke out in a grin. He reached under the counter, pulled out a single folded map, blew the dust off it and handed it over. “Last one,” he said. “Have it for free, love.”
I think he thought I’d just emerged from the jungle after been living with the dingoes for a decade, or maybe he suspected I’d just been released from a twenty year, high security jail sentence or perhaps he thought I’d been kidnapped by a cultist and been hidden in an all-woman, non-internet enclave for a few years. Something like that anyway.
Apart from the fact that despite having spent quite a few wasted hours trying to refold it in the correct way, the map has been serving its purpose.
Some people learn their way around a new place of abode by repetition. If they drive around following the GPS instructions they eventually get the hang of it. My brain doesn’t work like that. I go into a type of mental torpor when I’m listening to instructions or if someone is driving me to a particular location. Nothing sinks in. I could be driven to the same place fifty times and still not know how to get there.
I have to see it in my mind from a bird’s eye view. Maybe I was a bird in a previous life?
Who knows, it would explain my penchant for sunflower seeds, feather boas and scraping my beak on cuttlefish.
I’m also a kinaesthetic learner. I learn by doing things myself.
I remember a waiter bringing out a plate once in a Mexican restaurant and saying, “Don’t touch zee plate. Eet is VERY, VERY hot.”
You know what I did, right?
The blisters lasted for ages.
Scotto accuses me of not listening but it’s just that when he starts to explain things to me all I hear is, “Wa-wah-wah-wah-wa-wah… wawawa?”
If he sat there and had me update my Windows operating system to Windows 10 myself, and just supervised me instead of showing me how to do it and waffling on with technical jargon, I wouldn’t get so overwhelmed, lose my temper, flounce out and sulk with a wine on the veranda as much.
Anyhoo, the reason I drove to the shopping centre in the first place was to have coffee with these two Gold Coast bloggers.
Kathy from 50 Shades of Age , and Sue from Making the Mundane Merry .
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| Me, Sue and Kathy. |
Both are strong, resilient professional women who clicked with me instantly and who I’ve grown to love and care about through reading their blogs. New friends on the Gold Coast.
Who said blogging is a waste of time?
So are you a kinaesthetic learner, an auditory learner or a visual learner?
