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I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Good bye, San Francisco
So here I sit, waiting for a flight back to Singapore after 17 absolutely awesome days in the US of A – 9 days in San Francisco, 3 days in Las Vegas and 5 days in Austin.
It was just me and another girl friend. Everyone who knew about the trip feared for our safety. Parents, friends, relatives.
I was actually dreading this trip as it loomed closer. Thoughts of “why on earth did I agree to this?” and “ZOMG, can I survive this?!” ran through my head like wildfire.
It was my first trip to a place I haven’t been before. On my own. (Well, nearly – my friend was just as lost as I was.) Without any adults around. (Most of my previous trips were with family. Otherwise, I’ll be in a group of at least 3 friends.)
It cumulated into 2 days of frantic researching during the weekend before our trip, as I figured out transit maps, directions, hotel locations and places we wanted to go.
It’s day 17. Our trip is nearly over, and we’ve had a blast of a time. It makes me wonder what I was so scared of before, and I realized that I’m actually more independent than I think.
In between meeting Elea (hurray for blogger friends), belting out karaoke on a stage in front of a sea of unknown people, travelling to places far out from the city such as the Googleplex and Apple’s Cupertino Campus on purely public transport, sniffing out awesome scenic spots (we hoped) not everyone knew about and basically did everything we wanted to do, it was an AWESOME trip. More details in subsequent entries.
It was tiring though. My travel buddy is already all conked out in front of me in the cafe. Heh.
Until we get back to Singapore …
The Organized Traveller
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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