Friday, 24 February 2017

How to confuse the tourists (and locals!)

Well I was at the Botanic Gardens for the first time in many a year on Monday to meet up with an old friend for coffee. The new cafe is ilex Cafe and as is normal in this day and age, the floorplan of the cafe REQUIRES you to enter through a gift shop. This gift shop is of course labelled as the Visitor Centre but nevertheless has the obligatory overseas made kiwi souvenirs in it.

Anyway at the entrance of the corridor that leads to the cafe there are a couple of visitor information stands including a map of Hagley Park. It took me so long to understand it I took a photo of this map.



The fundamental issue is, of course, the map has been orientated to point East..... EAST..... EAST.
Now I understand that with a physical map in your hand some people might be more comfortable to turn it to correspond to the direction that they are travelling in. But this map is printed on a board inside a corridor with no obvious way to ascertain what direction you're currently facing. I have NEVER EVER seen a map of Christchurch printed this way. ALL maps (tourist or otherwise) available here will have a North at the top of the map. Indeed I would think 99.9% of all tourist maps are printed this way.

This must be so confusing to anyone visiting the city. Why have a map that is different to every other map? And it makes no sense. The focus of the map is obviously the Botanic Gardens and the park. If you look at the shape it is clear that this would fit better if rotated 90 degrees.

So I looked at the map a bit closer and noticed that it was associated with Find:ChCh website. So I visited the website of Find:ChCh and went to the Botanic Gardens and Visitor Centre section where the map is clearly the 'right' way up. Hmm that seems consistent...NOT.


So what happened. Who was the "You had one job" idiot that produced this confusing and ill thought through Visitor Map?? It would be nice to know.

Whilst I was there I even noticed people looking at the map who were clearly confused. I hope someone at sometime makes a change to this map, it really does not make any sense.

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Music Education

This post was written a good few years ago (2011) but is as relevant today as it was then. It was saved as a draft as it wasn't quite complete. I've now managed to finish it!!

A couple of experiences over the last week have led me to this point where I need to share some thoughts on youth and music.

The first was a question that my daughter asked me during an episode of American Idol. Now I've got to say that I don't recall how we ever got to be watching this on the TV as she is the only one that is really interested in this show and unfortunately she had already received a season ban on the show for an earlier misdemeanor. (details surrounding this long forgotten) Anyway, the show was on and there was obviously a break in the actual competition (if you can call it that) and there was a guest segment where one of the seasons contestants got to sing with a hero of theirs (or at least that's what appeared to be happening).
So on trucks Rob Halford, looking to be fair not too bad given his age (close to 60), and launches into 'Living after midnight'. At this point my daughter asks 'Who are Judas Priest?'. I have to say that I was, at the time, quite taken back and was considering carefully how to respond to this question (as this is really important when dealing with questions around rock facts) when the second half of the segment kicked in with 'Breaking the Law' and almost immediately all three offspring piped up with 'Oo oo, I know this one' followed by 'Isn't this a Tenacious D song?' How now to respond to these comments/question???


The second incident occurred as we drove back from eldest son's parent/teacher afternoon. Said son was recounting how he had spent time that day with another boy named Eugene. I commented, in the typical Dad who isn't that funny way, that his friend should be careful with that axe. This comment was met by a total lack of response bordering on actual silence/confusion. I repeated that I thought that Eugene should be careful with that axe, but alas still no response.



Now I appreciate I am from an elder generation, however I've got to say that the younger generation doesn't seem to have anywhere near the thirst and desire for knowledge around music that those of us that are now in our thirties/forties etc had at the same age.

I remember that from a really early age I wanted to listen to and hear as many types and styles of music that I could, if nothing more than to decide what I actually liked and wanted to know/learn more about. Often that involved finding out about music that 'older people' listened to so I could understand where the current music had come from. I wanted to hear and learn about the music from the fifties and sixties as well as listening to music of the late seventies and eighties. Where has that gone to now?

How many of our children know anything about music that isn't/wasn't produced by an industry that is solely focused on making a quick buck? From my experience this is fundamental to most music publishers nowadays. The proliferation of TV shows dedicated to producing a new pop star / group every year is testament to this process. When did you last hear an original song on any of these shows save the one penned by 'the famous writers' to produce that season winning artist sign off and 'allow' the new artist to (cue fake US accent) 'a recording contract'.

Anyway I've got my memories from the good old days when real music was real music and I hear Vinyl is on it's way back so I'm sorted. Rock on.