Thinking in Generalities
Dec. 17th, 2007 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pen_gruntMy brain tends to generalize and group things. This works really well for developing quick understanding of information and concepts, and forming creative ideas. However, there are times when it's just really confusing.
For instance, if I were trying to recall how to say "door" in Swedish, my brain would think "foreign language" and I might think of "puerta" (the Spanish word). Because I know enough Spanish and Swedish, I mix the two frequently. After all, they're both "foreign" and my brain groups them as such.
I'm now in Santa Clara instead of San Francisco, and that means I've changed hotel rooms. I was working at my computer, I looked up and wondered where the heck my soda was. My soda was in the OTHER hotel room back in San Francisco, and I was very, very confused for a bit. I associated objects with being, generally, either "not in the hotel room" or "in the hotel room", and that I had moved to a different hotel room was throwing me mightily.
I also need to learn to locate my glasses BEFORE taking out my contacts when in strange rooms. Somehow, I always forget and end up groping blindly around a strange room for several minutes.
You can tell we're in Silicon Valley. The concierge was on a video screen. You see, she was working from home today, but there she was, on the screen. We could talk to her and hear her respond perfectly. Any information we needed, she printed from her home computer to the printer on the concierge desk. It was spiffy technology, if a little surreal and inhuman.
For instance, if I were trying to recall how to say "door" in Swedish, my brain would think "foreign language" and I might think of "puerta" (the Spanish word). Because I know enough Spanish and Swedish, I mix the two frequently. After all, they're both "foreign" and my brain groups them as such.
I'm now in Santa Clara instead of San Francisco, and that means I've changed hotel rooms. I was working at my computer, I looked up and wondered where the heck my soda was. My soda was in the OTHER hotel room back in San Francisco, and I was very, very confused for a bit. I associated objects with being, generally, either "not in the hotel room" or "in the hotel room", and that I had moved to a different hotel room was throwing me mightily.
I also need to learn to locate my glasses BEFORE taking out my contacts when in strange rooms. Somehow, I always forget and end up groping blindly around a strange room for several minutes.
You can tell we're in Silicon Valley. The concierge was on a video screen. You see, she was working from home today, but there she was, on the screen. We could talk to her and hear her respond perfectly. Any information we needed, she printed from her home computer to the printer on the concierge desk. It was spiffy technology, if a little surreal and inhuman.
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Date: 2007-12-18 04:41 pm (UTC)On the flip-side of the glasses thing, I wander around both my place & my folks place an awful lot without either contacts or glasses, blind as a bat and perfectly comfortable. Probably a good thing I don't travel much!
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Date: 2007-12-19 07:33 am (UTC)And the glasses thing--yeah, I can wander around my house blind forever, but hotel rooms? It took me a good 15 minutes to find the glasses once.
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Date: 2007-12-19 08:56 pm (UTC)Doesn't that kinda defeat a chunk of the purpose of working-from-home, though? Like lounging around in your pajamas?