State?

[threemonkeys]

Reasons why New Zealand and Australia will never unify - #12: Addresses.

I was filling out an online registration form earlier. It was for a local only product from the local subsidiary of a dutch based multi-national. I know they have a local presence because I walked past their head office today. The form contained fields for my address as follows: address, suburb, state and postcode. In other words, an Australian format address. I was just a bit irked because the creators of the form had obviously used a form designed for Australia and hadn't bothered to change the fields to be appropriate to the people using it.

It got me thinking again about the standard Aussie address format. I have had plenty of reason to contemplate it in the past. Back when I was at the BNZ, we shared a fraud detection system with the National Australia Bank. We had to format data out of one of our local systems to send it to this shared system over the Tasman. The problem was that the target system was set up for Australian style addresses and we had huge difficulties mapping our address data into the correct fields. The problem being that we had both a suburb field and a town/city field to deal with. The issue proved quite a tricky one and ultimately meant the system was not as effective as it should have been for us. About the time I left, a replacement system just for New Zealand was being trialled.

I understand why the Australian system works the way it does. A population distribution has the majority of the people concentrated in the capital cities means that town/city is less important than suburb and state for a large chunk of the population. It is not the same here. In fact I wonder if anybody has come across the same system anywhere. What other odd addressing systems are there out there? The British have always claimed to have the most precise method of defining an address. I wonder who has the most confusing.

Comments

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

I'd like to be able to put town as well as suburb. No real reason, it just seems more complete. :)

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Heh! The best (or should I say worst) addresses that I had to deal with in a computer system was when working on an international version of a telcom billing system that was deployed into the Phillipines.

In Manilla the following sort of address is perfectly valid, and the postman and everybody else is expected to be able to understand and follow it :

Person, son of Person, living with their Aunt Persons-Aunt in the green cardboard box just past Mrs Other-Person's broken-down 1968 Mercedes truck, which is about a 100 yards past where the water pipe leaks all over road south of the Place-Name market in District XYZ, Southern Canton, Manilla

Or words to that effect anyway :)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Yep. Especially as you don't live in one of the mega-cities.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I had that kind of thing in mind but I couldn't come up with anything as wonderful as your example. Job security for posties must be pretty good in the Phillipines.

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

An American hotel once refused my booking because I didn't have zip code.

Or perhaps it was because I got obnoxious when they insisted that I had to have one...

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

The British TV programme that is equivalent to Fair Go here (sorry I can't remember it's name) once did a presentation about silly addresses and how clever the British posties were to consistently deliver the mail properly.

No sooner was the show broadcast than people started sending letters to it with ever more silly addresses on the envelopes. The presenter was a lady called Esther Rantzen whose prevailing characteristic was a very pronounced overbite. The "winning" letter to the programme had as its address a drawing of an open mouth with huge protruding teeth.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps" indeed. Although the attitude of "the right way" is certainly a common one in that part of the world.

[thoatherder.livejournal.com]

At Nicky Mclean's behest I used to address my letters to him to

RN Mclean
Blah
Blah
Airstrip One.

They always got delivered.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I wonder how you postcode that? :-)

[roaring40s.livejournal.com]

I ws told that in Japan houses are numbered in the order they are built. Rather than streets, the city is divided into blocks, then smaller blocks, then random house numbers. Consequently every other street corner has a map to show you who lives where. I also read that that's why fax machines became big over there - you could easily send somebody a map to show how to get somewhere.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Ah, I thought Japan had some system which required highly trained posties but I couldn't remember the reason. Thank you for the enlightenment.