Sense of direction

[Alan]

Let's talk about the topic of the day:

What's your sense of directin like?
http://www.english-test.net/stories/49/index.html

Happy searching!

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story A day in the life of a policeman

[Tamara]

Hi Alan,

My husband is completely sure of my full helplessness (in the above sense), even though I’ve never been lost irretrievably, as yet.
But he is firmly convinced that if he lets me walk with no his instructions, I certainly never find a right way.

Sometimes (when he has enough time for anxiety), it looks impressive.
For example, if I need to go somewhere alone (say, to a neighbour county), he - suddenly - becomes very serious, launches RAC route planner (software geoinformation system), constructs for me ‘the best way’, printed all that pages out in color and then explains it to me in full details – slowly and patiently, as if I am disable (maybe, he is right? I quite admit that.)

The only basis for that is my - innate? - inability /disability to say (to guess right ) the right number of left/right turnings – even for the well-known way. I don’t count them and never remember by heart, just go and always find. Finally.

But for him it looks as an indisputable evidence of my sad, full and incorrigible topological cretinism.

P.S.
(I think, it would be excessive to mention that in most cases I do without his instructions. But he doesn’t know that. And never would believe if you said it to him )

Tamara
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It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water…

[FangFang]

Hehe, it is funny. But my sense of direction is bad , too. When i was wandering along New Street Corner in Nanjing i told myself" ok, it is your tenth time to be here, everything will be ok " , but i would be lost soon . Later i found myself circling around it within a 50 metres range. I should have believed my sense of direction which may lead me the right way . But usually they can't stay in my mind longer and were proved to be wrong.
It is the same reason why i don't like to travel alone. Those railway lines crossed make me afraid. When i stayed in the big hall of ShangHai Station I felt senses of nerves. That is really terrible. When i go to a new place i will notice all that things left by so that i will remember to go back , but they are too much for me . Finally i call friends to pick me up.
Well, i hope to enhance my sense of direction!

[Parallel]

It’s not so bad after all. I’m happy for that because my eyes’ sight is quite the opposite! I can often hardly read the street names unless I’m standing right in front of it…
So I have to make that up by a good sense of directions and a mind map of the main landmarks. When I travel to a new city for instance, I always take a look on the map in advance and try to get those things into my brains: Rivers and hills are my favorites, but I also appreciate high churches and towers of course and also citys built on slopes.
As an architect, I’m into geometries of course, and so I often find it easier to follow my way by looking at the angles of streets at a crossroad or curbs of the roads I can see on the map, instead of reading all the street names. And most of the time I’m quite sure about the general directions in a city, that really helps me a lot!
But of course there are limits to it. I will allways remember that night when I tried to find a cheap hostel in Venice, Italy. I asked for directions and was given answers like: follow the street till the next corner, then turn left, then walk on to the little square, take the third street to the right, cross the bridge and there you are… no chance at all! It was getting late, my luggage pressed hard, a lot of the small ways hadn't any names, so I eventually asked for the way back to the main station. And that’s what they said: "Just follow the people and you will get there!"
Urs