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Aptitude Test

Desmond79

On Friday 27 March, I will do an aptitude test a phase two of a four-phase application for an engineering apprenticeship with NIE -Northern Ireland Electricity.

The test will be at 9 am at Ballymena Tech. I went on a dummy-run to there yesterday afternoon, and the road layout overloaded me. I couldn't get back onto the country roads quick enough. Lanes freak me out. I will drive then to a local park-and-ride then get a taxi to the Tech. Afterwards, I plan to get a train to Belfast. Then I'll get a bus back to the park-and-ride after staying a while in the city.

I'm just not a 'Townie'.

  • in reply to Desmond79

    I'm sure I would use it if I were a car driver (or smart-phone user). But my sensory distortions mean that I can't drive, and I always walk wherever I can - and as I hate traffic noise, I'm always looking for the sneaky ways around that avoid roads wherever I can (I would love it if street-view also had an "alleys, snickets, and ginnels view" mode!)

  • in reply to Trogluddite

    Google Maps > Sat Navs.

  • in reply to aidie

    Some of my family are from around infamous Milton Keynes. I can't begin to imagine how people who have difficulty with reading or numbers might find it, as there would just be no way to orient yourself - it's like those cheap cartoons where the characters walk across a background that repeats itself every few frames! I lived in another new-town, Basildon, for a while, and that was just as bad.

  • Sounds a lot like me - I was definitely born to be a country bumpkin. I never have any problem finding my way around when I'm rambling in the countryside; a quick glance at an OS map if I'm not familiar with the lie of the land, and then off I go. When I used to be a caver, I was well known for my preternatural ability to know whether I'd walked past a particular lump of rock before.

    But dump me in the middle of a town or city, and I can really struggle to get myself oriented, even when it's somewhere I've been before. I think it's mostly that they overwhelm my senses so much, so I can't fixate on the details that I could use for direction finding. Just the sound of lots of traffic can make me want to curl up into a ball under a tree somewhere; and on the rare occasions when a melt-down makes me do a runner, I always come to my senses somewhere "green", even if it's miles away from where I started.

    Google street view is a huge boon, though - I'll spend hours on it before I have to go somewhere unfamiliar, making notes or taking screen shots of things that I can use to orient myself - all of the street names I need, shops with peculiar sign-writing, gardens with unusual plants, or whatever.

    Hope your aptitude test goes well!

  • u did well to navigate around ballymena.  its all one ways systems and roundabouts.