> And on that topic, anyone have any hints on how to get better spatially adjusted in real life? My sense of direction is literally horrible; I can actually have driven or walked a path numerous times and STILL forget which way to go the next time. It's quite inconvenient, really.

How do you look at directions when you're driving or walking around? I heard once that there are two basic ways of doing it, and people who naturally do it one way have immense difficulty understanding directions given by somebody who does it the other way. These are:

1) You pay little attention to landmarks but think of the route in terms of directional turns. You would be more comfortable if given directions such as "go straight ahead for a block, then turn left, then turn right, then go straight ahead again, then turn right" or "go north for a block, then turn west, then turn north, then keep going north, then go east."

2) You do it mostly by remembering visual references. You would be more comfortable with directions such as "go to the library, then turn left, then turn again after the four big trees, then keep going until you see a yellow house, then turn right where the hedge finishes." Even these instructions are easier to follow if you have been there before and can picture the route in your head.

I am in the second group. If I need to drive somewhere, and I am not sure how to get there, the first thing I do is look up the destination on a road map, and decide the route I will take to get there. But after that, I have to *imagine* that route visually. Once I have the route in my mind, I can then drive directly there without looking at the map again or even thinking about it, even if it's an all-day drive with lots of complicated bits. If the route takes me outside areas I am visually familiar with, I will have to stop and consult the map again, pick a visual landmark to look for, such as names on street signs, and then proceed from one new landmark to the next until I get where I'm going.

If somebody said, halfway there, "Hey, it'll be quicker if you take Blah Street and then go along Thing Street", I would get instantly and totally confused, because I already *had* this complete visual track laid out in my mind. The only way I could rapidly change to a different route would be if I already had a visual track for at least part of that new route as well. If it involved roads I'd never been down before, that would be it. Lost.

I have a very good visual memory for places, even when walking on bush tracks with numerous branch tracks, loops and intersections; once I've been to a location I recognise it again instantly. So, no matter how hard it is to *find* a destination, and how many wrong turnings I take in the process, I find it impossible to get lost on the way *back*, because I know where I've been.