Just another dimension?

Monday, March 27, 2006
Asking for directions -vvw

I read an article in today's Life! about why men don't ask for directions. According to the author, it's not an ego thing but rather the desire to accomplish the challenge of finding his own way to the destination.

I don't know about other people but I sure am one of those who don't like to ask for directions. I have never really thought about the cause of it but I think this guy's reason is one of the major factors for me. The other major factor would probably be my aversion to interacting with strangers. I also happen to trust maps more than a random guy in the street.

Traveling wouldn't be much fun without such challenges. Indeed, many of my memorable moments on road trips are of the times when navigating was difficult. For example, when we had to drive to an obscure factory outlet with nothing more than a hand drawn souvenir map that was not-to-scale.

Then there was my favourite navigation moment in Australia when we had to drive through a town and onto the highway. We had no map of this town and no compass either. The only things we depended on was the knowledge that the highway exits the town on the northwest boundary, the Sun, my knowledge of astronomy and one small assumption, i.e. in a town built on relatively flat ground, a reasonably efficient road network would get us where we want to go if we just keep heading in that direction. The assumption turned out correct and we hit the highway without making any unnecessary turns. We could have stopped and asked someone but then there would no longer be any suspense.

Of course there are times when it is better to just ask. On the same trip, after leaving the highway, we drove along a long narrow road with hardly any road signs. It was getting quite dark and we decided it would be best to verify that we are where we think we are. So we asked a kind shopkeeper who told us the directions. Apparently, we were still on the correct road. I was glad we asked though. We might have started to doubt ourselves and strayed from our original course.

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Yiheng made 1:03 PM

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