• About Me
• Travels
  • Travel Maps
  • UN World Heritage
  • Why Travel?
    • Reasons
    • Motives
  • Trips
    • Paper Trail
    • Life in Colombia
    • The Unwind
• Places
  • Introduction
  • People
    • Cities
    • Structures
    • Industry
    • Science
    • Events
  • Nature
    • Notable
    • High Points
    • SCUBA
  • Other
• Learning
• Work
  • Experience
  • Quiet Freedom
• Marketing
  • Product Management
  • Expectations
  • Challenging Normal
  • Mind Studies
• Technical
  • Skills
  • Change Mgmt
  • Design
  • User Interfaces
  • Advanced Tech
• Health
  • Results
  • Heart / Stress
  • Food / Plastics
  • Water / Light / Air
  • Sound / EMF

 

Challenging Our Sense of Normal

Copenhagen, Denmark - rental bicycle (automatic unlock with coin, like 1 euro at the time - cheap!) and bicycle parking garage 

As markets become more crowded and competitive due to global competition, and more things vie for our atttention,
sometimes looking at the same thing differently can be beneficial. While traveling the world, I had an opportunity to see
so many things "with new eyes." Looking at everyday things from a different perspective is "in my DNA" now. An interesting
example of this, that perhaps everyone can identify with, is how some countries view bicycles. Rather than just as a
child's toy, young adult's mode of transportation, or for sporting / fitness purposes, it is integrated in to everyday life.

The funny thing about marketing is that our sense of normal can be challenged even when talking about
something that is "normal / unremarkable." It doesn't work on everyone, but it works on various percentages
of people depending on the subject matter. We are all susceptible to this depending on our personality.

Personally, I prefer when the marketing message has substance behind it. Meaning, there is something
"real" (new feature / product / design / benefit, etc...) behind the advertising / message.

I sometimes like to say - one (wo)man's normal, is another wo(man)'s weird / cool.
Do these photos challenge your sense of normal or are they just ho-hum?
If yes, do they affect you on a "thought-level" or "emotional-level" or both?
 

Tokyo, Japan - Multi-Level bicycle escalator  -- Instructions on how to use the escalator

Bicycle garage and top down view of a bicycle escalator at a different entry/exit point

Tokyo, Japan -- Leiden, Netherlands
Raining while on a bicycle, use an umbrella! Child sitting in back too. No excuses! It rains in the Netherlands too, but the photo above is meant to show just how
much the Dutch rely on bicycles. In this case, bicycles going to a train station. They even have double decker bicycle parking lots. But, I don't have photos personal photos of those.

Trondheim, Norway bike rental system -- Bicycles in Hiroshima, Japan
The Trondheim system uses an electronic bike unlock system. Once I registered with the local tourist office (with a credit card swipe in case of theft),
I was given the proper code to remove a bike. This bicycle is what I rode on the bicycle escalator pictured further below on this webpage. From an outside
perspective, one might assume both of these wealthy modern countries to be the same as anywhere else in transportation (cars and/or trains),
but the reality is, human powered transport still plays a big role. Growing up and living in pre-dominantly car happy cities, places like
these always were a source of endless fascination to me.