Math Man

[Slave to the Phone]

Buglady, I'm jealous. I'm a fast reader both in English and my mother tongue French, but as I really love reading, I would love to be able to read even faster.

NO, don't wish that. I read very fast. So fast that I need at least 3 books for an 8 hour plane trip. I want to savor good books, but my eyes just keep moving on and my brain processes the story, and then the great book is done in 3 hours and I wanted it to take longer.

(I waited until all the Harry Potter books were out...and read them over one weekend.)

[NotAlBundy]

NO, don't wish that. I read very fast. So fast that I need at least 3 books for an 8 hour plane trip. I want to savor good books, but my eyes just keep moving on and my brain processes the story, and then the great book is done in 3 hours and I wanted it to take longer.

I have the same problem! I really should invest in an e-reader for when I travel.

[Antisocial_Worker]

And the cows had been eating shrooms and fermented apples.

There is actually a neighborhood, built in the 1920's, in my city where the developer let a horse wander his newly-acquired property. He followed the horse, marking out the routes it took, on the assumption that it would know the best ways to traverse the terrain. To this day, it's the only neighborhood in town that I will reliably get lost in.

[telecom_goddess]

Buglady, I'm jealous. I'm a fast reader both in English and my mother tongue French, but as I really love reading, I would love to be able to read even faster.

French is your native language? Nice...I'm part french and don't know the language at all.

I don't really have a stupid human trick Although I will chime in and say I'm a fast reader, and read way above my grade level at school. My mother never believed me when she saw how fast I went through books, she thought I didn't cover every page. She was a fast reader and believed that only SHE could be that fast ..not lil ol' stupid me

[taurinejunkie]

Technically, Quebecker is my mother tongue, but the differences between that and (European) French are about as significant as those between, say, American English and British English.

[ArcticChicken]

Technically, Quebecker is my mother tongue, but the differences between that and (European) French are about as significant as those between, say, American English and British English.

So, mutually comprehensible for the most part, but occasionally you're left staring at someone going "I know all the words you just used, but I have no idea what you just said."

[taurinejunkie]

That sounds about right on the informal level, though the more formal you get, the more indistinguishable the 2 become, in my experience anyway.

[ozcatbug]

I'm also a person that can read upside down as fast as right side up. I also have no hesitation reading aloud from upside down text. I can also read mirrored writing fast (backwards writing that you need to look at in a mirror to read), whether upside down or right side up. It really comes from being lazy. I used to read children's mystery books as a kid where the "mystery" was written at the end of the chapter either upside down or mirrored to encourage you to work out the mystery before reading the answer. Since I read fast, I couldn't be bothered getting up every couple of minutes to check the book in the mirror to see if I was right, and the thought of turning the book upside down just seemed stupid, so I taught myself to read it as it was. Took me a bit of time to get numbers right, but now it is as easy as reading the right way. It also makes Trivial Pursuit an easy game since most people don't cover the back of the card when they ask the question so the answer is right there for me to read.

I also have what I call semi-photographic memory. Everyone knows what photographic memory, but unfortunately for me mine only works for things that you really don't need to remember with as much detail as I do. For instance I can still remember the exact layout of the first 4 aisles and aisle 6 of the supermarket I worked at in 2003. And when I say exact, I can remember which brands were next to each other, and which were below. When I was doing some office admin work experience, I had someone ask if I had seen a particular letter the previous week. I thought about it and said that I had filed it the previous friday with a huge stack of other documents. When I went to the filing cabinet and pulled out the exact letter that was asked for, I got shocked looks from everyone in the office. Look I don't know why I remember the things I do, and why I don't remember other things. It would have come in really handy when I was studying, but instead of remembering my sold and fluid mechanics studies, I could rattle off the prices of most of the products sold by the 7-11 I worked at. Which was useful the day the registers stopped working, I just wrote down what everyone bought, added everything up in my head, and gave correct change from the cash drawer that we didn't manage to put in the till when they shut down. After everything was sorted and the tills were back online, my CW was amazed that I hadn't made any mistakes after I put in all the sales. What can I say, its a gift.

[Buglady]

I have the same problem! I really should invest in an e-reader for when I travel.

DO IT. I love my e-reader... I can carry so many books, I never have to worry about not having one to suit my mood, or finishing too soon and being bookless. (I usually have 3-4 books going at the same time - it spreads them out more than if I read each one straight through, and it allows me to pick and choose depending on my mood. I've always done this, and some of my teachers in elementary school refused to believe I could keep track. Grr).

[Food Lady]

I would use an E-reader for magazines, especially cooking mags. I would probably download the occasional book, too.

[TheCheerfulTreeRat]

are about as significant as those between, say, American English and British English.

Ah. Huge then. <hides behind sofa, sniggering, with upturned saucepan on head>

[Seshat]

I connect random, apparently unconnected items of data, and make them work together.

It's the sort of gift that leads to 'this steam engine can push this cart, but it makes it too heavy to travel on normal roads' matching with 'miners use donkey carts on iron rails to haul heavy loads' and thus generating railways.

So far I've never actually invented anything as fantastic as railways, alas.

But it does come in handy when you're looking at a 'fix it' problem in the house. 'Hey, don't we have that scrap <whatever> in the shed?'



I also have an anti-gift. I can't tolerate movies. I cannot make sense of the image, sound and dialogue together - it overloads my wee little brain.

[telecom_goddess]

I also have an anti-gift. I can't tolerate movies. I cannot make sense of the image, sound and dialogue together - it overloads my wee little brain.

Oh that SUCKS. I love movies and can get completely absorbed in them. Could you handle something that's more dialogue oriented like a movie that's based on a play? Butterflies are Free has almost no distractions.

[mharbourgirl]

Ah. Huge then. <hides behind sofa, sniggering, with upturned saucepan on head>

I'll have you know it's very painful to snort 7-up through one's nose. And my primary monitor is NOT at all pleased at the moment.

[Seshat]

Oh that SUCKS. I love movies and can get completely absorbed in them. Could you handle something that's more dialogue oriented like a movie that's based on a play? Butterflies are Free has almost no distractions.

It depends a lot on how it's done. Even 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead' has too much background detail and too many things going on.

Yes, RL is very hard for me too.