Randwick News

As the nights get cooler and the crowds thin out at the beaches, there’s still plenty to do in our great City. I hope you’ll join us in Coogee on Friday 26 May for the Koojay Corroboree. A huge shout out to the kids of La Perouse Public School who worked with our much-loved local Aboriginal artist, Jordan Ardler, to create the amazing artwork that’s being used to promote the event. If you haven’t seen it check out the street banners, which will be flying across our City.

Council’s 2023-24 draft Operational Plan and Budget will be on public exhibition from Monday 1 May for four weeks. This outlines exactly what’s in the plans for the coming financial year. Some highlights include:

• $49.5 million dollar capital works budget

• 3km of new footpaths

• 4.6km of upgraded roads

• 4 new playgrounds

• A new BMX pump track

• 5,000 new native plantings

It’s a comprehensive document and one I hope you’ll have a chance to look at. Use this QR code to be taken directly to it so you can read and commentit’ll be live from May 1 – May 29.

I appreciate your input and look forward to hearing from you.

What’s On

TUESDAY 2 MAY

LIBRARY AFTER DARK: TABLETOP GAMES

6 – 9pm

Margaret Martin Library

WEDNESDAY 3 MAY

SPARK IN THE PARK

10:30 – 11:30am

Randwick Community Centre

SUNDAY 7 MAY

RUNSWIM COOGEE

AQUATHLON

7:30 – 10:30am

Coogee Beach

SATURDAY 20-SUNDAY 21 MAY

SUE LIU AT THE BAYVIEW

10am – 3pm

The Bayview Gallery, La Perouse Museum

SUNDAY 28 MAY

SYDNEY WRITER’S FESTIVAL JONATHAN SEIDLER IN CONVERSATION

1 – 2:30pm

Margaret Martin Library

UNTIL FRIDAY 26 MAY

UKULELE FOUR WEEK COURSE FOR BEGINNERS

10:30am – 12pm

Lionel Bowen Library

1300 722 542 randwick.nsw.gov.au

Open Your Ears

Recently I came across a news story that caught my attention. Netflix revealed that up to 40 per cent of its users regularly turn on the subtitles. You might be forgiven for thinking that Netflix viewers are turning subtitles on because they are a little hard of hearing or they are watching a foreign film. Indeed you might be right, but 40 per cent is a large number and it tells me that people, regardless of how good their hearing may or may not be, simply can not understand what is being said.

Try this simple experiment... Watch something on TV that you haven’t seen before. Make sure that whatever you choose has its narrative driven by dialogue - a movie, documentary or even the news, just not sport. Now, simply hit the mute button and see how long it takes before you start to lose interest. If you last more than three minutes you’re doing pretty well. Most people will find that if they can’t hear or understand what’s being said they simply zone out or switch off regardless of how good the visual is. Incidentally, the same experiment can be done in reverse, in a noisy bar or restaurant, or anywhere that involves needing to hear what’s being said in order to follow the meaning of a conversation.

The reality is that understanding something through listening vastly outweighs our ability to understand something through seeing it. This fact might be hard to digest when we think of sayings like, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but I can absolutely guarantee that if you listened to those thousand words about the picture in question you will have a much greater understanding of its meaning than by just looking at it. To give some weight to this, as much as I have trouble watching Tom Hanks, look at the scene in the movie The Da Vinci Code where he is explaining to his co-star the symbolism and meaning in the painting of the Mona Lisa

Further, it might be interesting to know what we actually do with our communication time to extract meaning. Perhaps unknowingly, a whopping 55 per cent is spent listening; reading, writing or watching something comes in at a combined 28 percent; and speaking sits at only 17 per cent. By listening to what is being said and getting the intonation and tone of how it is said, we simply digest more meaning. Text messages can be misconstrued, emails glossed over, photos glanced at... all of them visual media that can leave themselves open to misinterpretation.

With this in mind, there is a big difference between hearing and listening. We might have heard what someone said, but were we actually listening? It’s a common problem that plagues interpersonal relationships. To actually focus on listening to what someone says, rather than hearing them while impatiently waiting until you can speak again, removes a huge barrier to understanding. Hearing is a physiological phenomenon, listening leads to understanding and helps assign meaning to what you’re in fact hearing.

In all fairness, research does show that the brain will automatically process a visual stimulation before an auditory one, and that sound in general is more of a subliminal experience, but if you were to close your eyes and just listen, what you start to hear will have more meaning. Try listening rather than just hearing in your next conversation. Try it with nature, music or even in a space that at first seems silent. You will be surprised!

If you ever get accused of ‘selective hearing’, take comfort in knowing there’s biological rationale for this. Despite the often-negative connotation, selective hearing can have a positive outcome. A parent can often isolate their own child yelling out ‛Dad’ or ‘Mum’ in a crowd, a screeching tyre alerts you to danger, and hearing the garbage truck from 300 metres away reminds us we haven’t put out the garbage. Again it’s a subliminal process, often automatic but highly useful.

Now allow me to go back to Netflix and the subtitles. After digging a little deeper I also discovered that young people are four times more likely than older viewers to watch TV that actually contains subtitles, mostly shows that fall within the ‘reality’ genre where contestants may be whispering or conversation that microphones struggle to pick up. But whatever the genre or situation, seeing might be believing, but listening leads to understanding, and in my view that is everything.

U p N e x t : U p N e x t :

L a d i e s D a y L a d i e s D a y v s v s

R o u n d 6 v S y d n e y U n i R o u n d 6 v S y d n e y U n i

S a t u r d a y M a y 6 t h W o o l l a h r a O v a l

S a t u r d a y M a y 6 t h W o o l l a h r a O v a l i c k ( 1 5 t h v R a n d w i c k ( B a c k T o E a s t s ) B a c k T o E a s t s )

2 9 t h v N o r t h s ( 2 9 t h v N o r t h s ( C o u n t r y D a y ) C o u n t r y D a y )