Signs

New places and cultures present implants with a number of potential confusing, terrifying and/or embarrassing situations that require explanation:  language (or just terribly mangled accents), cultural norms, driving on the WRONG side of the road, coffee consumption levels, having hermit crabs as pets (this is an admittedly Midwestern thing, but has not stopped being funny for people I tell here), strangely shaped and colored foods...the list seems endless.

Signs (street, construction, hiking, and everything in between) are a constant reminder of these slight but stark dissimilarities in culture. Because people are inherently pretty dumb and need information force fed to them, signs have to be as uncomplicated as possible. Simple illustrations, few words, and bright colors often suffice.

Perhaps what I'm about to present will only be of interest to my American readers who don't experience and interact with these signs on a daily basis. Presented below are several examples of signs that I've gathered that made me AC (audibly chuckle, new more-tempered replacement for LOL?).

On the sidewalk outside of a train station:

How many of you knew what 'busking' was?

No ambiguity in New Zealand street signs:

@schroeder.dan says, "...but what happened to poor Beatrice when she went that way?"

Construction signs always get their point across succinctly:

Just one lonely shoveling dude. 

"Surprise! Trucks"

When on a hike here, signs for navigation are pretty scarce. You'll often see something like "MacCLAREN TRACK 4 HOURS," with a wooden arrow pointing in an enigmatic direction. But advisory signs are plentiful, and can be pretty perspicuous,

'DANGER, brought to you by Auckland City Council.'

or vague,

Spoiler:  a certain smart and swinish character from Lord of the Flies met his fate this way.

or both,

Landslide, whee!

or just too thorough.

So, like, don't move?

And finally, the funniest and most unexpected, are the signs reminding people to use basic toilet etiquette:

A little sad this wasn't a complete limerick.

Yes, a repeat picture from a previous post. Still hilarious to me.

My good friend, Ricardo, who has traveled parts of SE Asia, tells me the above sign is necessary. This is because toilets are designed for squatting. He even provided an extremely helpful picture/diagram of this lovely bathroom procedure:

No caption necessary.

Cheers!