Friday, March 14, 2008

Communicating what?

Communication is apparently what today's world is all about.
Job advertisement requirements list good communication skills and there are numerous improving your communication skills courses to go on and still it goes wrong.
The advertisement on the television that intones solemnly "especially in these times when the future is uncertain...."
I am left wondering when there were times when the future was certain. I thought that uncertainty was one of the defining features of the future.
Today I spent fifteen minutes on the phone, on hold, waiting for a person from the insurance company to be available to talk to me. During this time I was thoughtfully played a song which had a repetitive chorus about "she's gone, she's gone she's gone". This was interrupted every thirty seconds by a voice that told me, "your call is important to us, we'll be with you shortly."
So the call went something like this "she's gone she's gone she's gone, your call is important to us, we'll be with you shortly oh oh oh she's gone." Am I being mocked?
Then there were the reassuring promises that someone cares. At the mall there was a nice big blue sticker of wheel chair on the automatic door from the car park. Great, easy access for those using a wheelchair - excellent.
Wheel easily through the automatic door and use the low, easy to reach lift buttons, a large lift arrives, plenty of space to turn around and again buttons are easy to reach. The lift lowers to the ground, where the shops are, and out of the lift to find a heavy door that is manual and opens inwards. What is one suppose to do? The door does have that reassuring blue wheelchair sticker on it. Now I grant I may be missing something as I am not in a wheelchair but have used this lift with a child's buggy because I thought the sticker meant something.
Maybe in the future communication will improve after we have all done more courses on it, though I admit that is uncertain.

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5 Favourite Sights Seen

  • 1996 Watching tropical lightning turn night to day, outside a little wooden church in a small village in Sabah.
  • 2004 Flying down the Rainbow Valley at 8000ft in a cessna on a clear blue day.
  • 2003 Seeing and hearing Michael Schmacher rolling out of the pit garage in his Ferrari in Hungary.
  • 2009 Chancing upon 100 or more dolphins just off the Kaikoura Coast swimming around, jumping out of the water, doing somersaults and generally having fun.
  • 2006 Finding a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the bush at Kaikoura that was full of playing baby seals.