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It's easy to feel disconnected. The world is a big place, to coin a cliché.I am lucky enough to have visited Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwymdrobwyllllantysilogogogoch, a town in Wales with 57 letters in its name and the longest town name in Europe.It is a pretty tourist town and the last time I visited the sign at the railways station ran the length of the platform.A little less known is the New Zealand town of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, also with 57 letters. These two are beaten hands down by the Thai's name for Bangkok, which gushes on about the city and its merits, and is a tongue twisting 155 letters long.At the other end of this very silly scale are a few towns that have minimalism as their catch word. In Scotland we have Oa on the island of Islay, Ae located north of Dumfries and the town of Bu in Orkney.Just short of not having any name at all are three places that for some reason went even further and use only one letter for their names. Y is in Picardie in north western France and is pronounced ‘ee'. There are about 30 Y-ites living there.In the remote Lofoten Islands in northwest Norway is the town of A, and about 150 citizens wrap up warm and live there while in Alaska Y has a population of over 60,000 people.For thousands of years people have lived largely separate lives, cut off from each other by time, distance, language and culture. Transport has brought us together over the past couple of hundred years especially, although sailing ships certainly shrunk the world down to a manageable size and made contact with other places possible if not easy.The Internet has been and will continue to be the great equaliser. I can sit here at a desk in Albany Western Australia and in a few seconds talk with someone in say, A in Norway and even if we don't share the same language, communicate by means of translation software.Douglas Adams dreamed up such a device years ago, before all this technology turned our lives into something else. He called it the Babel Fish.This, even 50 years ago, would have not only been thought of as impossible but the ramblings of a madman. A few hundred years ago this kind of talk would have had me swinging from a rope, locked in an asylum or drowned at the bottom of a pond with a rock tied around my ankles.So whether you live in Bangkok, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwymdrobwyllllantysilogogogoch, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, A, Y, Oa, Ae or Bu or anywhere in-between, think DIFFERENT. We have so much left to do in this world that has been lent to us, and perhaps only one lifetime in which to do it.
Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com
I am a children’s author living in Albany Western Australia.
I tour schools running creative writing, self-esteem and advanced memory techniques workshops, and run an online creative studio for everyone who would like to join in at: www.chocmint.com
I also discovered recently that I held the secret to having a wonderful life. I believe everyone has access to this, many even know it already, but doing what it takes is hard for most.
Therefore I am giving away the secret to having a life you love. If you already have that life, you don’t need it. If you haven’t, go to: www.chocmint.com and subscribe to our very occasional newsletter. When you do, I will send out what makes a great life.
There’s nothing to lose, because there is nothing to spend. And it’s not a secret.
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