In Praise of Tour Guides: World Tourism Day 2011

(As today is the UN’s World Tourism Day, I thought I’d repost this old entry…)

As I may have mentioned here in the past, I’m an information junkie. However, I’m an information junkie cursed with a terrible Swiss Cheese of a memory, possibly caused by an old gypsy woman, and therefore I’m a fan of tour guides.

(The Glass Floor in the CN Tower can hold the weight of 14 hippos.)

We spent a lot of time on tour buses this week, mainly because a ticket lasts for something like five days and thus it’s easy transport around an unfamiliar city. The great thing about this is that it also comes with a commentary and, as I’m the sort of guy who sits and listens to DVD commentary tracks, that’s a selling point.

(The horses in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are classed as officers, and get badge numbers and official funerals.)

I enjoyed the Toronto tour guides a lot (ShopDineTour Toronto, for a free plug), not least because they pull off the sort of trick that I just can’t – they know what they’re talking about, they can remember it, and they can communicate it in an entertaining way. This is the sort of thing I struggle with – my brain has a communication and information retention firewall installed, and so when the guide on the way to Niagara Falls is reciting the history of Toronto AND making it interesting, I’m in awe. He just seemed to know vast amounts about John Graves Simcoe, the guy who founded Toronto, and yeah, sure, he’s making a living from reciting this stuff but it’s something I could never do. I’d get the script all tangled up in my brain, and then knock myself out on a low-hanging branch.

(Casa Loma, a mansion/castle just outside of downtown Toronto, was used as the filming location for Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the first two X-Men movies… but not the third.)

That said, I also want to give a shout-out to guides from other cities – some the people who first got my respect as guides were the US National Park rangers on Alcatraz Island, who not only knew all about the old prison there but also the oysters and fish that live around the island. It’s a cool, outdoorsy job, but it’s also got a sense of the geek spirit, in the most postive way – the idea that this stuff is cool, it’s good to be enthusiastic about it, and there’s nothing wrong with communicating that enthusiasm to the people who pay to do the tour. It’s fun.

(Yonge Street is the longest street in the world, stretching 1896 miles out of Toronto. Many dispute its claim to this, however, but I don’t care.)

And don’t forget the drivers – heck, my main regret from Niagara Falls was that they didn’t give the driver a mic as well, because he was as clued up as the guide and had a fun double-act thing going on. We were near enough the front to hear this, but it was gold. The personalities made a pretty long journey that much more entertaining.

(The city was originally named York, but when New York got too big, the Canadians renamed it Toronto so there wouldn’t be comparisons.)

But for courtesy, friendliness and entertainment value, we probably have to give the award to the guide we saw a few times throughout the week, who recognised us and said hi, bothered to tell us when the bus times were so we didn’t end up inadvertantly stranded, and, while we guessed he was a bit geeky from his first MacGyver reference, the fact that he admitted to being a comic collector in front of a bus full of people gave him geek kudos. AND he had his Toronto knowledge. You can’t ask for more than that.

(Toronto is North America’s third largest film and TV filming location, after LA and New York.)

So if you’re ever in Toronto, check out the yellow buses. They’ll even give you a free map!

Writer’s Block: Knowledge is power

Everything! I’m an information junkie. I don’t like it when I find out I don’t know about stuff. For instance, I found out today there used to be an empire in southern Russia, the Kazhar empire. I’d never heard of it. That bothered me. See, I’m interested in stuff like history or theology, or entertainment or Transformers, and while I’m aware there’s lots I don’t know, that’s just part of the thrill of discovery. In general it’s the stuff about which I know next to nothing that gets me twitchy.

For instance, I’d like to know more about art. Some people can look at a piece of art and draw all sorts of conclusions from the colours, imagery, the brushstrokes, the composition. I look at a piece of art and say "Ooo, that’s nice." And then someone will tell me I’m looking at the sign for the emergency exit.

I don’t know a lot about classical music either, although that’s down to my limited attention span. Symphonies go on too long, and yes, I’m aware that makes me sound like a total dumbass. I listened to the Doctor Who Proms, but I don’t think that counts.

I could probably do with knowing more about science, although I’m more interested in how it’s applied than the process itself. Basically, I’d like to be sure that, if I were ever in a life or death situation, and had only everyday household items around me, I could blow up some bad guys, like MacGyver. I’d also like to own a Swiss Army Knife, or maybe a working Sonic Screwdriver.

I wish my mental arithmatic was better.

I’m rubbish at languages. I know more Klingon than I do, say, Spanish. That’s really crass.

I know very little about how my car works.

Or my computer, for that matter.

And while I think I’ve got reasonable biblical knowledge, t kinda bugs me that I can never remember chapter and verse references. That probably makes me a lame Sunday School teacher.

So yeah, I’m the kind of person who reads random Wikipedia articles for fun, and I once got annoyed that I couldn’t write in binary, so I devised a spreadsheet to help me do that. But knowledge is power! And maybe a little obsessively crazy. But power too!

Matt’s Canadian Adventure #2 – In Praise of Tour Guides

As I may have mentioned here in the past, I’m an information junkie. However, I’m an information junkie cursed with a terrible Swiss Cheese of a memory, possibly caused by an old gypsy woman, and therefore I’m a fan of tour guides.

(The Glass Floor in the CN Tower can hold the weight of 14 hippos.)

We spent a lot of time on tour buses this week, mainly because a ticket lasts for something like five days and thus it’s easy transport around an unfamiliar city. The great thing about this is that it also comes with a commentary and, as I’m the sort of guy who sits and listens to DVD commentary tracks, that’s a selling point.

(The horses in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are classed as officers, and get badge numbers and official funerals.)

I enjoyed the Toronto tour guides a lot (ShopDineTour Toronto, for a free plug), not least because they pull off the sort of trick that I just can’t – they know what they’re talking about, they can remember it, and they can communicate it in an entertaining way. This is the sort of thing I struggle with – my brain has a communication and information retention firewall installed, and so when the guide on the way to Niagara Falls is reciting the history of Toronto AND making it interesting, I’m in awe. He just seemed to know vast amounts about John Graves Simcoe, the guy who founded Toronto, and yeah, sure, he’s making a living from reciting this stuff but it’s something I could never do. I’d get the script all tangled up in my brain, and then knock myself out on a low-hanging branch.

(Casa Loma, a mansion/castle just outside of downtown Toronto, was used as the filming location for Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the first two X-Men movies… but not the third.)

That said, I also want to give a shout-out to guides from other cities – some the people who first got my respect as guides were the US National Park rangers on Alcatraz Island, who not only knew all about the old prison there but also the oysters and fish that live around the island. It’s a cool, outdoorsy job, but it’s also got a sense of the geek spirit, in the most postive way – the idea that this stuff is cool, it’s good to be enthusiastic about it, and there’s nothing wrong with communicating that enthusiasm to the people who pay to do the tour. It’s fun.

(Yonge Street is the longest street in the world, stretching 1896 miles out of Toronto. Many dispute its claim to this, however, but I don’t care.)

And don’t forget the drivers – heck, my main regret from Niagara Falls was that they didn’t give the driver a mic as well, because he was as clued up as the guide and had a fun double-act thing going on. We were near enough the front to hear this, but it was gold. The personalities made a pretty long journey that much more entertaining.

(The city was originally named York, but when New York got too big, the Canadians renamed it Toronto so there wouldn’t be comparisons.)

But for courtesy, friendliness and entertainment value, we probably have to give the award to the guide we saw a few times throughout the week, who recognised us and said hi, bothered to tell us when the bus times were so we didn’t end up inadvertantly stranded, and, while we guessed he was a bit geeky from his first MacGyver reference, the fact that he admitted to being a comic collector in front of a bus full of people gave him geek kudos. AND he had his Toronto knowledge. You can’t ask for more than that.

(Toronto is North America’s third largest film and TV filming location, after LA and New York.)

So if you’re ever in Toronto, check out the yellow buses. They’ll even give you a free map!

La Trivialata

Earlier today, Chris Haney, co-creator of Trivial Pursuit passed away in Toronto, aged 59. Condolences to his friends and family, and much respect to Mr. Haney’s invention of a game I actually stand half a chance of winning.

I’m an information junkie. You want to lay some obscure knowledge on me? Go right ahead, I’ll be your friend for life. Unfortunately, I’m the worst kind of information junkie, the kind with an atrocious memory, the kind of memory that would make an absent-minded goldfish shake his head at me in disgust. And then promptly forget he did – in yo’ face, goldfish! I swear, if my brain had enough room to store all the random facts I’ve learned over the years… I’d probably forget how to drive, or eat. Nevertheless, tell me that a volcano may have been responsible for the invention of the bicycle and it’ll lodge in there more securely than, say, my mom’s birthday. Which is utterly disgraceful, but I blame genetics.

I’m also a member of a pub quiz team. I say ‘team’, we’re probably more of a collective. Well, I say ‘collective’, what I actually mean is ‘a bunch of people who never all manage to get in one room at the same time’. We’re still undecided on our name – it’s either going to be ‘Danger! Contains Nuts’, ‘Snowball’s Chance in Hell’ or ‘The Large Hadron Collider Doesn’t Work’ (it’s a tough call but my vote’s with the latter). We’ve actually spent more time on the name than, you know, preparing for the quiz.

Being in that team can be disconcerting, of course, because pub quizzes show you the painful limits of your knowledge. I always knew my sporting knowledge was pretty catastrophic, but I also know next to nothing about music beyond the last twenty years and anything to do with cinema prior to Star Wars. I’m not bad on history in general, but ask me what year something happened in and I’m stumped. On the other hand, I’m pretty good on the Bible and Entertainment. This would be more helpful if our team a) didn’t have a habit of arguing ourselves out of the right answer, and b) wasn’t saddled with a member who expects the quizmaster to get things right. If you say the most expensive TV series ever made was a British production when, in fact, it was a British co-production then people are going to get the answer wrong! Obviously!

(That member is me. You probably already guessed that.)

Thing is, ‘trivia’ does all this a disservice. Sure, individual facts taken in isolation don’t amount to much, but give them context, put them alongside all the other facts, look for the links and draw connections and use them to inform what you know about all that other knowledge and suddenly trivia becomes something bigger and more important. Sooner or later it may even develop into wisdom.

So in tribute to Chris Haney, have a go at the Trivial Pursuit Experiment. I was having a good run on it until my mojo collapsed and I gave up in a strop. Right now the over-thirties need you…