Typewriter Torment

test

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:55:03 +1100

Beating boredom: how to pass time on the road

December 8, 2010 - 10:03AM

Need to beat boredom on the road? Learn some card games. Photo: AP

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but travel’s pretty boring.

Not the actual destinations – they’re great. It’s all the waiting around to get to those destinations that’s the real problem, and unless you’re on some sort of transfers-and-accommodation package to Hamilton Island, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of it.

You wait in airports. You wait in train stations. You wait at bus terminals. You wait at taxi ranks. And all for the pleasure of then spending endless mind-numbing hours on the planes, trains, buses and taxis you’ve just been waiting for.

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So what do you do? You make your own fun. You make the time pass.

A reader, Katrina, emailed me about this the other day: “I’m about to set off for three weeks to South America with a friend,” she wrote. “We have quite a bit of time to kill while travelling and have been trying to think of games we could play that just involve two people. I was wondering if you or your readers have any suggestions. Games that involve a pack of cards or no props are ideal!”

OK, I’m no expert at games, but after years and years of travel, I do know a bit about making time pass. Some of these might sound contradictory, but, you know, everything in moderation.

S—-head
Sorry about the language, but that’s the name of the card game: S—-head. S—-head has two major selling points: most travellers already seem to know how to play it; and if they don’t, it’s dead easy to teach them. Everyone has their own little variations on the rules (Using jokers? Pfft!), but the general gist remains the same the world over.

Travel Scrabble
There are two types of people inhabiting this earth: those who love Scrabble, and those who hate it. I fall into the former category; unfortunately, pretty much everyone I’ve travelled with has fallen into the latter, which is why my Travel Scrabble set has only been used once (I won, just quietly). My advice: make sure you’ve got someone to play against before bringing it along. (Oh, and ai is a real word.)

Look out the window
It sounds obvious, but it’s really worth thinking about. You’re in a foreign land, travelling, most probably, through bits of it you’ll never see again. Rather than go to sleep, or read a book, make a point of staring out the window for a while and taking it all in. You’ll see things you’ll be telling people about for months.

Learn a language
All this spare time of yours could actually be put to good use. Whether it’s flicking through a phrasebook, listening to lessons on your iPod, or even studying a textbook, travel time is the perfect opportunity to brush up on the local lingo. It might just get you out of a sticky situation down the track.

Drink
Don’t want to sound like a flag-draped knuckle-dragger here, but boozing it up really does pass the time incredibly well. Trust me, if you’re stuck somewhere that has a bar, walk over, grab yourself a beer, strike up a conversation with someone, and your flight/train/bus will be called in no time. All you’ll have to worry about then will be the constant need to pee.

Gadgets are your friend

"Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:16:50 +1100

“Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a significantly higher share of the money. The average amount of cash given back by the people in the “normal” room was $2.81. But the people in the clean-scented room gave back an average of $5.33. … Participants surveyed in a Windex-ed room were significantly more interested in volunteering (4.21 on a 7-point scale) than those in a normal room (3.29). 22 percent of Windex-ed room participants said they’d like to donate money, compared to only 6 percent of those in a normal room.”

- Overcoming Bias : Could It Be That Easy?

isopod

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:11:01 +1100

isopod

“We dare to go into the world where there are no names for...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:56:35 +1100

“We dare to go into the world where there are no names for anything,” Balanchine once said to Jerome Robbins. Most of us, on the other hand, live in a prosy, commonsense world where everything has a name and most things have an explanation. That’s why it is so refreshing to enter into the presence of great art, and why the greatest works of art always contain an element of ambiguity. A masterpiece doesn’t push you around. It lets you make up your own mind about what it means—and change it as often as you like. (via Terry Teachout on the Mystery of Music - WSJ.com)

50 Years of Space Exploration (via Adam Crowe)

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:30:21 +1100

50 Years of Space Exploration (via Adam Crowe)

Photo

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:25:00 +1100

The Case Against Female Suffrage

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:01:05 +1100

This is not satire.

Bands want to know if their music was used on Gitmo detainees -...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:42:53 +1100

Bands want to know if their music was used on Gitmo detainees - CNN.com

Musical Taste as Parallax

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:41:02 +1100

Musical Taste as Parallax:

Horning gets his Zizek freak on over at PopMatters, in response to the recent NYT article on Pandora. Manages to turn the question of musical taste into a social commentary. Lah dee dah.

via o-song

Hang on a second.... a COOKIE diet?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:38:58 +1100

Hang on a second.... a COOKIE diet?

Cupcake Cars: $25,000.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:23:33 +1100

Cupcake Cars: $25,000.

"…the reply made by a pianist whose admirer gushed about how lucky he was to have so much talent:..."

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:13:19 +1100

“…the reply made by a pianist whose admirer gushed about how lucky he was to have so much talent: “Yes, and the more I practice the luckier I get”.”

- Think by Simon Blackburn, p.103. (via o-song)

The Financial-Crisis Lit Cheat Sheet

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:59:16 +1100

The Financial-Crisis Lit Cheat Sheet

Probably guilty: Bad mathematics means rough justice

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:21:44 +1100

Probably guilty: Bad mathematics means rough justice

Mind Games Help Stave Off Sweet Temptation

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:36:55 +1100

Mind Games Help Stave Off Sweet Temptation :

…the German psychologist, along with colleagues from the Netherlands and the United States, has discovered a creative way of decreasing the temptation to indulge. Simply gaze at the delectable confection and think to yourself: Wouldn’t this make an excellent doorstop?”

Yep. A tasty doorstop.

What the fuck are these?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:32:45 +1100

What the fuck are these?

"We are the only creatures who comprehend that we are going to die and we are also the only..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:29:51 +1100

““We are the only creatures who comprehend that we are going to die and we are also the only creatures who can imagine living forever. It’s that combo that drives us crazy.””

- Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates

soupsoup: Your Text Is On Fire (Jacob Sutton for The Moment)

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:09:15 +1100

soupsoup:

Your Text Is On Fire (Jacob Sutton for The Moment)

Popular Names in Popular Music

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:04:42 +1100

Popular Names in Popular Music

"The “medical marijuana” movement may not be a threat to our civilization, but it is an..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:04:35 +1100

“The “medical marijuana” movement may not be a threat to our civilization, but it is an insult to our intelligence.”

- PostPartisan