[Written at 7.18 A.M. (27th May) Singapore time, 4.18 P.M. (26th May) Vancouver time.]
It was Grandma’s first trip to Alaska! (Well, it was the first trip for the rest of us too … but the emphasis of this entry will be on grandma, non?) We embarked on a 7-day long cruise to Alaska (Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan) last Wednesday and it was beyond awesome.
For most of us, it was the activities on the cruise, the shopping and amazing scenery that dominated our memories from that trip.
For grandma, it was a slightly different story. I’m pretty sure she still has vivid memories of almost being toppled off her wheelchair and wheeled into walls, pillars and what-have-yous. There’s more where that came from, which I will elaborate further in this entry.
Considering the events of the past seven days, I wouldn’t be surprised if my grandma develops a permanent phobia to her wheelchair. Erps.
Note: My grandma can walk perfectly well. It is just that she’s fast approaching ninety and tires easily, which is why we let her ride on a wheelchair most of the time – occasionally letting her walk around so that she has some exercise.
Gran’ and her wheelchair. The airline tag on the wheelchair reads
‘priority baggage’. Teehee.
Being the funky grandmother she is, she takes everything in her stride. Her face turns pale with fright when the various incidents happen … but bursts out laughing (along with the rest of us) later on.
Generally when people travel with me, their jaws drop when they see the amount of documentation and research I do prior to a trip. I admit, I can go a little overboard sometimes – but well, it is better to over-prepare than to under-prepare.
I have compiled a travel folder for the upcoming trip to Canada and the U.S. commencing this Saturday – comprising checklists for everything I would be bringing there, right down to schedules for clothes-washing, important telephone numbers, maps and the like.
Travel folder.
As this would be my first travel to the U.S. – I hadn’t quite realized before that there was so much registration to do before I head there, such as the registration of ESTA for entry into the country, and with the local MFA (because of terror risks surrounding the U.S.).
In view of the number of registrations I had to do, the last thing I wanted was to lose track of all of them.
Different sections of the folder.
And why the checklists? Apparently, writing/typing checklists prior to a trip has been a habit ingrained from young. No, it wasn’t taught to me by anyone. I picked it up myself … since I was eleven. This was due to a past experience.
The last time I let someone do the packing for me was prior to a cruise trip when I was nine. Apparently, that someone had forgotten to include the most important item (hint: ‘u’ is the first letter) in my baggage. As a result, I vaguely recall the embarrassment I had to face walking around in my mum’s oversized (and really uncomfortable) panties.
Okay, I think that was too much information. But well, that was the most pertinent experience that made me swing towards my obsession with checklists (and demanding to pack my own bags ever since).
Since that incident, I devised a standard template for travel checklists and have been sticking to it religiously. I type out my checklists on Microsoft Excel now but I used to have a special travel notebook for this stuff before computers became ubiquitous.
And yeap, I check things off the list whenever I pack, and (sometimes) even when I unpack!
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