19 year old woman from Lenzie held in Peru over drugs

[Brummie Clyde]

A significant amount of my geographical knowledge is linked to going to the football. If someone doesn’t really travel that much, beyond a work commute or to and from one place for a night out, it’s easy to understand why they don’t really know where anywhere is.

I think a lot of my geography comes from football. We had the names of tonnes of foreign (mostly Italian) teams on paper cutouts, that you could put on a Subbuteo scoreboard when I was a kid.

I used to look them up in maps.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

On 15/07/2021 at 00:13, Sortmeout said:

This.

I’m generalizing here and possibly being sexist but in my experience women seem to have the biggest challenge with this type of thing. Although that is possibly because you spend more time with your partner than you do your friends and as such you get to hear more of their thoughts.

My other half lives in Renfrew and booked an appointment for me which turned out to be in Airdrie. After going to the appointment I was saying to her later on how it would’ve been better to book somewhere closer to me as it was 27 miles door to door.

She then asked if Airdrie is only 3 miles away from her in Renfrew because she knows it’s about 24 miles from hers to mine following her satnav along the M8 and back down the 77.

When I answered no and explained why she was nodding but I could tell she wasn’t taking it in.

Forget generalising - I'll be very specific here. Had Mrs WRK been a Navigator in WWII, we'd probably have bombed Caracas. 

Every time, and I mean every time, she goes to the West Or South Ridings, she will phone, about an hour after her expected return (To just outside York) - "I got stuck in Leeds." This happens if she's been to Wakefield, Bradford, Sheffield, Barnsley - even, on one unforgettable occasion, Harrogate. It's like she feels she has to get the A64 back, but hasn't realised you can get on it at various points. Mental.

Edited July 16, 2021 by WhiteRoseKillie

[WhiteRoseKillie]

1 hour ago, Ross. said:

A significant amount of my geographical knowledge is linked to going to the football. If someone doesn’t really travel that much, beyond a work commute or to and from one place for a night out, it’s easy to understand why they don’t really know where anywhere is.

That's more navigation, surely? Having a knowledge of where places are on the globe help us make sense of, for instance, why the Soviets sticking missiles on Cuba was a big deal for the Yanks, why that ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal recently had such a massive effect*, even understanding (whatever our own opinions) why some nations (e.g. NZ) took the path they did with Covid. 

Knowing where things are on our island helps put things in context as well - such as which airports are best to fly from (cheaper vs. travel to/from), and the way with weather that blizzards in the South-east let Yorkshire folk know that they might have to put their big coat on at the weekend. 

*I'm still convinced the first shipment of Airfix's new Vulcan kits were on that..

[Sortmeout]

A lady in my work one time asked how long it would take you to drive to South Africa and was shocked to hear it was more than “just a few hours”.

[Hedgecutter]

28 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

Forget generalising - I'll be very specific here. Had Mrs WRK been a Navigator in WWII, we'd probably have bombed Caracas. 

Fwiw, my grandfather got trained up as a telegraphist for D-Day and during naval training up in Orkney, he messed up a coordinate which saw some farmer's cow get shelled by the gun boat.  I guess that's why you practice that sort of stuff.

[SweeperDee]

Women in general have a more difficult time “visualising” distance and space because their brains aren’t wired for it, for whatever reason. It’s why men in general have a hard time detecting emotions in other peoples faces. Just not built that way.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Fwiw, my grandfather got trained up as a telegraphist for D-Day and during naval training up in Orkney, he messed up a coordinate which saw some farmer's cow get shelled by the gun boat.  I guess that's why you practice that sort of stuff.

“All morning i shelled cows”

[Ross.]

1 hour ago, Brummie Clyde said:

I think a lot of my geography comes from football. We had the names of tonnes of foreign (mostly Italian) teams on paper cutouts, that you could put on a Subbuteo scoreboard when I was a kid.

I used to look them up in maps.

 

58 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

That's more navigation, surely? Having a knowledge of where places are on the globe help us make sense of, for instance, why the Soviets sticking missiles on Cuba was a big deal for the Yanks, why that ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal recently had such a massive effect*, even understanding (whatever our own opinions) why some nations (e.g. NZ) took the path they did with Covid. 

Knowing where things are on our island helps put things in context as well - such as which airports are best to fly from (cheaper vs. travel to/from), and the way with weather that blizzards in the South-east let Yorkshire folk know that they might have to put their big coat on at the weekend. 

*I'm still convinced the first shipment of Airfix's new Vulcan kits were on that..

The post above sort of sums it up for me. My interest in football and anything to do with it would have me looking up teams and seeing where they were on the map. More Championship Manager 1996/97 than Subbuteo, but watching World Cups, Euros, Copa Südamerika etc saw me take in far more than the average geography lesson as school.

[SlipperyP]

My sister thought that whatever way you were facing was North.

I didn't know to either laugh or cry.  This was during a drive to Newcastle and I had just installed Satnav. 

[Gordon EF]

23 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

There was a paper on this sort of thing (bit of the abstract at bottom).  My sense of direction is entirely map based, whilst my other half deals with left/right hand turns.  The issue with the latter is that they're f***ed as soon as there's any sort of  diversion.

 

 

I'm sure I read a thing about that not too long ago. Men tend to memorize maps and then navigate by basically mentally placing themselves in the map. Women tended to do it by remembering landmarks and where they were relative to each other. It's clearly a vast generalization but the 'map' way of doing it turns out much better.

Still remember visiting York with my mum and sister when I was a kid. We walked too far away from the train station and got lost. My mum started having a total meltdown thinking we were going to miss the last train home because we had no way of getting back to the train station. I picked up a map and we got there in about 15 minutes.

[welshbairn]

My sense of direction has definitely taken a dive since satnav and google maps on a phone. Worst is getting a picture in your head of where you are when you go somewhere new on holiday, used to suss it out really quickly, now I keep checking my phone all the time.

[Oscar P]

A few years ago a bloke stopped me on a back road in Dunblane, asking directions to somewhere in Falkirk.

I told him he was around 20 miles away and he was clearly shocked, and was obviously running  late for something.

He said that his Satnav had brought him here - they were fairly new back then to be fair.

It wasn’t till later that I realised he probably had input FK15... instead of FK1_5.. 

No road signs mentioning Falkirk might give you a clue I would have thought, or even just a bit of general awareness.

[Gordon EF]

8 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

My sense of direction has definitely taken a dive since satnav and google maps on a phone. Worst is getting a picture in your head of where you are when you go somewhere new on holiday, used to suss it out really quickly, now I keep checking my phone all the time.

Yeah, I think Satnav is doing that to more and more people. I went to Tokyo 12 years ago now and basically just turned up with a paper map  and spent a week learning the map and getting around the city that way. The next two weeks I was at a summer school at one the universities there and the Japanese folk would take the foreigners out for trips or nights out to the city. I'd spent so long with this map, I basically became the navigator for the group even though there were half a dozen folk from Tokyo with us.

At that time, I probably knew my way around Tokyo better than Edinburgh even though I lived there because I never used a map of Edinburgh.

[Ross.]

24 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

I'm sure I read a thing about that not too long ago. Men tend to memorize maps and then navigate by basically mentally placing themselves in the map. Women tended to do it by remembering landmarks and where they were relative to each other. It's clearly a vast generalization but the 'map' way of doing it turns out much better.

Generally how it has worked with me and the missus when we go anywhere. I tend to find it quite easy to navigate a city or town after a quick look at a map, where she struggles badly. The only time I have ever been unable to do it was in Split, in the old town there which was basically just a fucking maze. She was able to deal with that fine as she could remember the bars, cafes and restaurants she wanted to go to and where they were relative to one another.

[Gordon EF]

2 minutes ago, Ross. said:

Generally how it has worked with me and the missus when we go anywhere. I tend to find it quite easy to navigate a city or town after a quick look at a map, where she struggles badly. The only time I have ever been unable to do it was in Split, in the old town there which was basically just a fucking maze. She was able to deal with that fine as she could remember the bars, cafes and restaurants she wanted to go to and where they were relative to one another.

Aye, it wouldn't surprise me if the 'landmark' method works better in congested cities with complicated layouts. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened with me and my girlfriend in Tallin. We'd be a bit lost and she'd recognise a shop or a church or something and then know where we had to go while I was still cluelessly trying to work out where we where in my wee 'head map'.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

3 minutes ago, Ross. said:

Generally how it has worked with me and the missus when we go anywhere. I tend to find it quite easy to navigate a city or town after a quick look at a map, where she struggles badly. The only time I have ever been unable to do it was in Split, in the old town there which was basically just a fucking maze. She was able to deal with that fine as she could remember the bars, cafes and restaurants she wanted to go to and where they were relative to one another.

The place where I had a similar experience was Corfu Town - I don't have the slightest grasp of Greek, and even if I did, the devious bastárds use a different fucking alphabet on their signs.I fdecided to rely on the old faithful "downhill to the water", as I knew the bus back to our resort stopped by the harbour. Having put my faith in that, spent a pleasant few hours wandering around, lost but not lost, if that makes sense. 

[thisal]

3 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

When I'm helping out with scouts, every new batch will predictably ask something along the lines of "why do we need them anymore?" when dealing with maps, as if the GPS is a direct replacement.

Taking the 'maps don't have a battery to die on you at the worst moment' aside, I'd argue the #1 benefit is that maps make you far more aware of what's around you.  Sat Nav (notorious for leading folk down unsuitable routes, as Shandon or whatever he's called today highlighted another example of just the other day) just homes in on where you are and misses the bigger picture.  If you drive down the M74 for example, you might only see Lockerbie, Douglas etc on the screen, whilst a road atlas will let you see all the other stuff like Hamilton, Motherwell, Strathaven, Lanark, Wishaw, Annan, Dumfries etc etc and let you get a grasp of where they are relative to each other as well as letting you know that Tinto exists.

Similar when referring to an OS map whilst hillwalking (which I'd imagine most male Scots will end up trying at some point), you can see features further afield which lets you think "if the hill with the transmitter isn't to the left of us then something's up", plus it gives you a far better sense of scale and lets you know in advance about the existence of big f*** off cliffs, and where they are relative to your intended route.

Wait you need a map? I thought you just knew where everything was in Scotland.

[Gordon EF]

Just now, WhiteRoseKillie said:

The place where I had a similar experience was Corfu Town - I don't have the slightest grasp of Greek, and even if I did, the devious bastárds use a different fucking alphabet on their signs.I fdecided to rely on the old faithful "downhill to the water", as I knew the bus back to our resort stopped by the harbour. Having put my faith in that, spent a pleasant few hours wandering around, lost but not lost, if that makes sense. 

Walking pretty much aimlessly in a new town or city is fucking brilliant. Great opportunity to explore and find wee places most folk don't. I've not been on holiday on my own for a few years but it's one the things I Ioved about it. Just get up in the morning and start wandering. Get back to the hostel and find people to go out and get blootered with. Hang over McDonald's breakfast the next day then repeat.

[welshbairn]

Just now, Gordon EF said:

Walking pretty much aimlessly in a new town or city is fucking brilliant. Great opportunity to explore and find wee places most folk don't. I've not been on holiday on my own for a few years but it's one the things I Ioved about it. Just get up in the morning and start wandering. Get back to the hostel and find people to go out and get blootered with. Hang over McDonald's breakfast the next day then repeat.

Only downside is going straight out on the pish after dropping your bags, and not remembering the address or name. That was in pre smartphone days.

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

On leaving the school I worked at in Colombia I was presented by one of the pupils with a big papier mache Garfield the cat (I have no idea why). Spent a lot of time making sure there was nothing in my luggage there that shouldn't have been and an equally large amount of time packing this weird gift into my baggage. Bit of an anti-climax as it wasn't full of cocaine and ended up being a pretty effective bird scarer in my folks' garden