Japan undoubtedly thinks of everyone. Even those people who are travelling with dwarfs and would like them to watch you do your business. Is this post too wrong?
Category Archives: culture
Posted in culture, Divergence, Planning, Random observations, travelling
A new positioning for radio
Well it’s not quite that exciting but I was having a chat with Auntie Mye about why she always leaves the Radio on in the house even if she is out. I initially thought it was something to with scaring off potential burglars, but as it happens it’s because ‘a house is never lonely when the radio is on’. Which is a lovely little thought. I don’t listen to the radio much these days, only Lastfm, but it’s true, radio background noise is comforting and it’s not just at home. We all must of worked in those offices which could do with a bit of Radio ambience to breathe some life into the place and drown out the tapping of keyboards and long silences. Perhaps there is a campaign to promote radio in there somewhere.
I love it when you are having a chat with someone who shines a little light on something which makes you look at it differently, or with a new kind of affection.
Trotters, the bowlo, nutbags and rednecks
So far I have had a nice introduction into Aussie life. In between meeting lots of clever planners, the ‘relos’ have kept me entertained showing me the best of down to earth Australian hospitality.
First of all there’s the ‘trotters’. The best way to describe it is a kind of horse, chariot style race around a speedway track. I know people used to race these years ago back home in Sussex but only on the roads (it is of course now banned). Fingers crossed the family’s horse, which is now in training, will be racing later this year. It’s actually all pretty exciting.
Then there is the legendary Bowlo aka St John’s Park Bowling Club. I have never seen anything like it before back home. Imagine combining a bookies, casino, arcade, bingo, restaurant, sports bar, cabaret, dance shows…and of course bowling, all under one roof, happening at the same time. Just to give you an idea of how busy it gets on a Friday the four story car park is completely rammed. But one of my favourite things they do is a free mini bus that picks you up and drops you home. Awesome no need for Des.
Image via
The last thing I’m enjoying is the sports banter although at the moment I’m trying to get my head round the all the ‘football’ codes and the rugby obsession. Last week a player called Willie Mason branded QSL fans ‘a bunch of nutbags and rednecks’. Can you imagine Frank Lampard calling Liverpool fans a bunch of lazy, thieving scallys. It might well be true but he would banned for weeks. I love their confidence and brutal, albeit politically incorrect honesty! However his team were then thumped 30 – 0. A perfect example of cocky Aussies, when will they learn?
I’m getting a good repertoire going which mostly involves playing dumb when it comes to their favourite sports. It consists of asking if they play rugby because they didn’t picked for the football (I refuse to call it soccer) team. Pretending that I know nothing about Union and asking how the Australian Rugby team has done in the last 2 world cups and finally claiming that cricket in England is only played by toffs. At least one good thing about being over here with England not playing in the Euros is I don’t have to stay up till 2am to watch them play.
AAAA – The culture of creativity
This is one of the best vids I’ve seen for a long time. Sir Ken Robinson, at the AAAA Conference, gives one of the most entertaining and inspiring speeches on creativity I’ve ever heard. I can’t claim to have found it, Mark posted it last month. I’m surprised I’ve only just come across it. It’s so good I had to post it on here.
Not only is it good, it made me really think about my time at school and in particular one important moment. At the time it didn’t seem like such a life changing decision but looking back now I reckon it’s the reason why I now work on a PC rather than a Mac. When I took my options at high school I had to choose between Art or P.E. In fact there was a group of ‘creative’ or ‘enjoyable’ subjects that you were only allowed to pick one of. My school simply wouldn’t allow you to do more than one. I’ve know idea if this is the norm? I loved both and I reckon I was pretty good at them as well but I decided to take P.E, mostly due to the influence of my careers advisor and my Dad.
I ended up taking English, Psychology and Sport Science at A-levels, before going on to do a Marketing communications degree at Uni. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sad about it, I’m more than happy doing what I do. It just proves a few of Sir Ken’s points:
1 – Creativity should have the same status as literacy
2 – We shouldn’t be so afraid of making mistakes. If we’re not prepared to be wrong we won’t come up with anything original
3 – People don’t grow into creativity we grow out of it, or get educated out of it
Book Review – Unspeak
I think words are one of the most powerful weapons a planner can use and this is an excellent book that really gets you thinking about how to use them in a different way. It’s jam packed full of euphemisms, metaphors and hidden meanings.
Journalist Steven Poole analyses how governments, ‘terrorist groups’, religious leaders and corporations manipulate words in order to influence behaviour, thoughts and the opinions of the ‘herd’. So if you like words and political debate Unspeak this is well worth reading.
The Internet killed the alien star
Image via.
To be honest I’m fairly open minded about the idea of sharing the universe with other life forms but until I see something with my own two eyes, I’m a wee bit sceptical. A recent article by Ziauddin Sardar in the New Statesman draws an interesting correlation between the reduction in UFO sightings and the development of the Internet. Yeah I know, it sounds weird. Sardar’s opinion is that UFOs are merely cultural devices that allow people to explain the unexplainable: ‘Instead of projecting our fears of the inexplicable on to outer space, we project them into cyberspace’. Although seemingly sightings haven’t reduced by the hilarious flaming the poor guy gets from some serious UFO twitchers.
People are apparently now seeking solace in virtual worlds, online gaming, chat rooms, blogs, and forums, instead of in religion and UFOs. Sardar essentially believes the Internet has made us become self absorbed and inward looking. I’m not really convinced by his argument but there are some thought provoking opinions in there, whichis always good. You can read the full article here.
I personally believe that the Internet is anything but inward looking. It is far from being just an introspective tool, it gives people more freedom and confidence than ever before. Rather than feeling the need to seek out ‘the meaning of life’ perhaps people are just more comfortable with their existence and have a greater desire for self expression? It’s the generation of the creators rather than the followers.
Posted in Aliens, Communities, culture, Digital, Divergence, Random observations, Social networking, UFO
Only average people see the average in things
“Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still” – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
No one likes to think they’re average. But the fact of the matter is at least half of us are below average. Yes it’s true I’m afraid, averageness is all around us.
Now I think I’m quite a proud Englishman, despite the fact that we are generally average at everything in the modern world. Our culture is average, we’re average at sport, our economy is average, our service is average, our music is average, our weather is average and it would seem that even our creative industries are now seen as average. At least that’s how people generally think of it.
As a nation we seem to be a pessimistic bunch with such high expectations – God forbid should our great empire be considered average. I think we are way to hard on ourselves sometimes and perhaps a bit of optimism is in order. Just like this fantastic exhibition currently on at Tate Britain.
‘How we are: photographing Britain’ was an open exhibition that invited anyone to contribute photographs of Britain taken through their own lens so to speak.
It doesn’t necessarily celebrate our averageness, but embraces it and portrays Britain in its most unspoilt and often humbling way. Much of it is optimistic and endearing, looking for the interesting thing in an ordinary life or object. Such as these:
You can view all the entrants and winners here
Stop War
Via Worstweatherever
I love this kind of stuff. Very Banksy.
Posted in Banksy, culture, Divergence, Experiential, Graffiti, Politics
The world has gone mad I tell thee!
At the moment I’m about half way through my Open University Ethnography course and throughout the study material they always use the possessive adjective, ‘her or his’ instead of ‘his or her’, which incidentally should be replaced by ‘their’ in order to avoid any suggestion of sexism – which is fine by me. Now my spelling and grammar is distinctively average, so I’m not preaching about being grammatically correct. But when political correctness starts making the English language sound ugly I get annoyed. Try reading or writing a sentence using ‘her or his’ in it. It just sounds and feels weird.
“A student studying for their first degree”. Sounds normal to me
“A student studying for his or her first degree”. Sounds a bit too formal
“A student studying for her or his first degree”. Sounds like a man hating, bra burning women wants to make a point.
I’m all for moving away from sexist or discriminative language, but please get a grip.
Don’t sit down, don’t sit down, sit down next to me
Image via
On the odd day I don’t have the car I’m forced to use the train. I hate trains, they suck. Everything about them, or more specifically South West Trains, annoys the hell out of me (there is another post in here I think, but I’ll try and keep on TRACK for now. Bo bom che). Suburban railways are a bit of a different experience than the tube where all people do is stare at each others armpits. You seem to either get involved in or over hear loads of random and sometimes interesting conversations, with random and sometimes interesting individuals. Yesterday was one such day. I’d had a hectic one and sat down opening up my current read, Ethnography: principles and practices, whoo, whoo, when what society might call a chavette sat down opposite.
She wasn’t being very British at all and had the cheek to start chatting to a couple adjacent to her. Can you believe that, striking up a conversation with people you don’t even know – I bet that was uncomfortable for them. This was my first inaccurate sweeping social generalisation I made of her. That being a girl who will talk to anyone, wear a Lacoste tracksuit and a gold clown round her neck must be loud, gobby, annoying and uninteresting. She couldn’t possibly just be being friendly.
Anyway, I thought phew, I’m not in the mood for making polite conversation today, I’ll let some other poor buggers get it for a change. So I pretty much kept my head down and shut all the ‘yeah mates’ and ‘innits’ out and I didn’t really take much notice until the couple got off the train at the very first stop! Guess what? Yep, it was my turn for a chat. I tried to resist the first time after an ‘alwight mate’, with an abrupt ‘yep, good thanks, you?’ reply. My head went straight back to the book. ‘Ya jus finished work hav ya?’. As I looked up I must of had a bit of a face on as she said straight away ‘sorry, ya probably jus want ta read ya book? Ignore me, I jus like a chat me’. So I thought bugger it. She hadn’t been offensive, seemed genuine and after all I’m reading about ethnography, why not undertake an ethnographic interview with a real life DE, right hear, right now.
I’m not sure if I heard this right, but I think she said her name was something ‘Destiny’ something. I blame Beyonce to be honest. Anyway, we went on to exchange life stories for the next 45 mins and whilst she often gave me a bit too much information on her sexual encounters with ex-boyfriends and asked some very personal questions of me, she was quite sweet and just generally inquisitive. She asked me about the book I was reading, what I did for a living (this wasn’t easy to explain), where I lived, who with, what was she like, is she pretty (after all you don’t want to be going out with a munter as she so eloquently put it). My life looked pretty rosy in comparison to hers and everything I found out about her made me quite sad. How she was so jolly, chatty and amazingly wise for her age was beyond me.
Without going into too much detail everything bad in society pretty much happened to her. She was only 20 and had finally got her daughter back after months of ‘Sofa surfing’ as she called it (which turns out to be a huge social issue). She was off drugs and doing an NVQ in hairdressing. I felt quite proud of her and I was thoroughly pleased I had a good chinwag with her. It reminded me yet again how judgmental we can be and the importance of ‘liking your audience’.
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