Alex's space

more random conversations with strangers - Brighton edition

I am spending a bit of time up at the local hospital at the moment for suspected # (that’s a fracture to you and me) to a weird bone in my hand called the Scaphoid the long and short of this is that you spend lots of time sitting in waiting areas for X-Rays, Doctors etc – so I put the talking to strangers project in to full flow.

[Doctors and Nurses do not count as they feel obliged to talk to you]

Observations:

first appointment:

got talking to 3 older ladies outside the X-Ray clinic [all from Brighton] by asking them if their broken wrists were as a result of snowboarding, turns out that this was a mistake as i was talked at for a long time (actually made the time pass faster so a good thing), anyway they were lovely, open and friendly.

not much chance to talk to anyone else as when ever i walked pass they grabbed me to do some more talking.

second appointment:

this morning first thing, so not in best form. firstly was distracted by quality of nurses this morning, one was so fine i practically lost the power of speech.

however, managed to talk to several people all waiting for X-rays and so on with out getting the negative reaction one would in London or in commuter mode.

Results:

100% [so far] successful record of engagement in conversation over a wide range of topics.

Conclusions:

well, I think that the results from the hospital may be skewed in the positive aspect for the following reasons.

• it is in Brighton where people are generally more open anyway
• it is in a hospital, where i guess people are happy of the distraction due to:
  • waiting times
  • nervousness
  • not much else to do

in short, apart from good practice at the technique of engaging marks in conversation these results should be regarded as biased.

Recommendations:

Firstly and most importantly – be nice to medical professionals they work hard in sometimes very trying conditions

Secondly, I need to develop a more methodical approach to some of the tests and perhaps introduce some randomising techniques [obviously an excuse to write some pointless software for my BlackBerry!]

Finally spell check my posts!