Public Address | Cafe | Island Life: Staring into space

Simon Grigg

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:07:10 +1200

I've bought four pairs of glasses online and all of them are as good as any I've ever had. Of course, I'm a small-plastic-frames person, retro-librarian-styles, so I don't have any issues with nose-fit or weight or any complicated stuff like that. Plus if they don't work out, you spent…

Sacha

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:13:20 +1200

Hi Janet. Great to see you working on another valuable project.

David, I missed the broadcast and it doesn't seem to be on the RadioLive site. Can we get hold of a copy anywhere?

Sarah Wedde

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:38:48 +1200

I was 16 before I discovered that, in the words of my optometrist, I was "as blind as a bat". It was only by trying on my brother's glasses and being able to see clearly that I realised I had been living in a blur.

Most expensive discovery of my…

David Slack

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:01:25 +1200

Public Address Radio note:

We talk to Janet about the See Here project tomorrow afternoon at 5.00 pm, Radio Live.

Janet Digby

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:45:01 +1200

Yes Emma, but I hardly think we can blame you as an eight year old for undertaking in sinister actions!

andrew llewellyn

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:37:08 +1200

Andrew your comment about the colours after cataract surgery reminds me of my mother-in-law an artist who painted brightly colored paintings – after her surgery she was horrified ....

Yeah, I've heard that's common with artists who've had cataracts. Over a body of work you can see the decline, and…

Paul Campbell

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:02:58 +1200

Andrew your comment about the colours after cataract surgery reminds me of my mother-in-law an artist who painted brightly colored paintings – after her surgery she was horrified ....

Emma Hart

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:08:37 +1200

Thanks Janet, that's very useful.

Probably what hasn't been touched on here is the lengths to which children will go to conceal a visual impairment too. I can blame 'the system' for missing me until I was eight, but I did my best to game them.

Janet Digby

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:40:36 +1200

Parents with concerns about a child's vision should take them to the optometrist. Vision screening aims to detect amblyopia primarily and is not a complete vision assessment. In particular it won't detect problems with near vision.

Families who have a Community Services or High User Card may be able to…

anjum rahman

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:01:01 +1200

late into the conversation as usual, but yes i had the "tree" experience when i got my glasses at 16. didn't realise i needed them until i went for my drivers license. what kept going through my mind were lines from an eddie murphy movie (can't remember which one, it…

Kebabette

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:16:51 +1200

You're on to it Danielle, check out American Apparel's vintage eyewear or the ones on the header. Geek chic a go go.

Susan Snowdon

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:13:14 +1200

My license was endorsed so I have to drive a car with 'external wing mirrors'. (I think that cancels out anything pre-1920) Anyway, after I failed the test it only took two days before I wiped one of them off on a parked car. Bugger...

Danielle

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:53:05 +1200

You find this works out? I got a fab pair of glasses in Hong Kong, but I was never quite sure that they were as sorted as from an NZ optomestrist.

I've bought four pairs of glasses online and all of them are as good as any I've ever had.…

Kebabette

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:10:19 +1200

I gave contacts a serious go and found that my eyes were too sensitive. I could wear them, but couldn't put them in or out.

I sympathise, I didn't like the 'poking in your eye' aspect of lenses, now I can pretty much do it with my eyes closed (ahem).…

James Green

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:58:47 +1200

Go and get your prescription from a professional, try on some frames in their offices to work out the shape you like, and then head to zennioptical.com or goggles4u.com. Pre-internet: $600 glasses. Post-internet: $30 glasses. *Delivered*.

You find this works out? I got a fab pair of glasses in Hong…

Islander

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:51:19 +1200

Ah yes...primer 3, when I was shouted at for being stupid (because I couldnt see the blackboard)despite the fact that I had gone to school already a reader...the glasses were horrible but wonderfully life-enhancing – ooo look! That's what hills are!There's hills around Christchurch!!And light comes from lightbulbs!!! (Well hey,…

Kyle Matthews

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:31:22 +1200

Lots of things in that story remind me of how I got my glasses. I got them in standard 3, so 9, but like your one I was reading in bad light from an earlier age. In my instance I used to sleep with the door open and a hall…

Kebabette

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:49:34 +1200

Oh yes this brings back memories. I wasn't discovered until I was 8 and the optometrists were amazed I'd managed till then. It explained the rather fetching wrinkled up nose that featured in so many photos of me as a little 'un – clearly I was squinting to try and…

Grant McDougall

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:49:44 +1200

But it wasn't until I told her that I couldn't read the school blackboard unless I was sitting right at the front that the penny dropped...We also learn from the report that being short-sighted tends to yield average or above average academic performance. That may well be so but I…

Evan Yates

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:38:34 +1200

I got my first glasses at age 5, which immediately put and end to my career dream of being an airforce fighter pilot. Luckily, Aunty Helen removed any painful reminders of my lost dream some years later.

Mum told me, as I was a pre-schooler, the indicator for her was…

Josh Addison

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:12:42 +1200

I think the "leaves on trees" thing is pretty much universal — it was one of the first things I commented on when I got glasses at 18 (having first noticed my eyesight getting dodgy at around 16). And as soon as I made the observation, I was told that…

George Darroch

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:50:01 +1200

All of this reminds me of the work that the Hollows Foundation do. Theirs seems a particularly noble and practical cause.

Emma Hart

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:45:47 +1200

Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather than being enormous green blobby things that turned into pretty trees with leaves only when you got up really close to them.

Yep, trees are the thing. I stopped wearing…

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:44:49 +1200

Big thanks has to go to Hary Potter for making glasses cool for kids.

Let's hope no-one remakes Joe 90.

And that raises a question – if Harry's so goddamn magic, how come he needs spectacles?

Shep Cheyenne

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:39:22 +1200

Thanks Danielle I'll check them out.

Big thanks has to go to Hary Potter for making glasses cool for kids.

Russell Brown

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:25:55 +1200

I cannot express in words the astonishment at how different the world seemed – ohmigod, the colours! The clarity!

I'm going the other way these days. I'm the only member of the family without spectacles, but I have to get everyone else to read the small print on things.

Those…

Danielle

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:15:19 +1200

how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time

Seriously, you people are channelling my life or something.

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:10:29 +1200

Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather than being enormous green blobby things that turned into pretty trees with leaves only when you got up really close to them.

Heh – after a history not so unlike…

Annabel McAleer

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:54:16 +1200

The Plunket nurse told my mum I might be blind, when I was just three. So it was quite a relief when it turned out that I only needed glasses. Mum still tells the story of how delighted I was to discover that trees had leaves all the time, rather…

Danielle

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:52:29 +1200

it is because they tend to magnify the eye

Not if you're short-sighted, unfortunately – they make the eyes look smaller. There's also the terrific 'different prescriptions for each eye' problem, where one eye looks as though it's smaller than the other.

Also, I urge glasses-wearers: do not ever pay…

Raymond A Francis

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:42:19 +1200

Been there, done that.
I do have to say that while sitting in the darkness with the optometrist intensivily asking me questions I have to strongly quell a disire to lie, not sure why this is and it is (I claim) uncharacteristic
I do agree about the childhood testing not…

Paul Brislen

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:38:05 +1200

My own mother still despairs at discovering I couldn't see the blackboard at age 13... Years of guilt have followed, not all of it my fault.

Must get the girls' eyes tested regularly.

Danielle

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:27:49 +1200

Mum does, vividly and often, and unduly reproves herself. She was an exemplary mother.... But it wasn't until I told her that I couldn't read the school blackboard unless I was sitting right at the front that the penny dropped.

Snap! That was my situation exactly. My mother can still…

Emma Hart

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:26:43 +1200

I'm not sure how blind you have to be to get picked up by the vision testing they do in schools and kindies, but my boy had been through it three times before we called 'screw it' and took him to an optometrist. Short-sighted and astigmatism, just like Mum.

The…

andrew llewellyn

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:22:38 +1200

If all else fails... the eyesight test when getting your driver's license will catch any problems.

Probably too late for academic purposes though.

Public Address

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:22:38 +1200

Discussion from blog post.