Category: Trip

2018 in Photos

December 20, 2018

Distilling a year into ten photos is never easy, but this year was particularly tough. Furthermore whilst this post tends to prioritize vacation shots, that’s only because I’ve sorted them way better than the normal day-to-day photos, so there’s probably a few gems that should have been here that aren’t.

The year began, as it usually does, in Oz:

Bernard and I went on a lengthy road trip from the Southern Ocean all the way up to Newcastle and had a blast on the way. We even ran into notorious Australian terrorist Ned Kelly at one point:

In March KLS and I went to the city for the first of three trips this year. It was cold but fun, and we lived like the urbanites we are for a few days:

Our first international vacation was to Scotland, otherwise known as the prettiest country on Earth. This was one of those dream vacations we’ll never forget, and in our little car we saw the length and breadth of the highlands and hebrides islands and enjoyed one amazing day after another, like the puffins on Staffa:

Or the standing stones on Orkney:

Or even just eating fish’n’chips at the northernmost town in Great Britain:

During the summer Bernard and Lakshmi visited! Here we are deep in a dungeon:

We went on another vacation too. After a brief stop in Portland for Florence’s wedding (insert heart emoji here) we jetted off to Hawaii for fun in the sun… and a hurricane!

The first four days were beautiful and warm and sunny and we spent a lot of time at or on the beaches. But then this happened:

And next thing you know the beaches emptied and people wrote SOS in the sand:

As you know we were lucky and the storm dissolved before reaching us. But that was certainly an interesting and memorable experience, and one I don’t want to soon repeat!

I’ll end with a shot of my lovely friend Yossie, which just shows you don’t have to go to exotic places to take photos you’ll treasure forever:

So thats the year in a nutshell. A good one; a memorable one. I hope you enjoyed the blog in 2018.

What’s next? Well in a week I’ll be in Oz once again, and mid January I’ll be flying from Sydney to Tokyo where I’ll meet Bernard for a week of otaku madness. I think it’s safe to say there’ll certainly be some photos worth seeing here in the next few weeks…

The Year In Postcards

December 9, 2018

I traveled a lot this year and sent many postcards. Happily I received many as well, from all over the world!

As you know I have a particularly love of strange postcards, and happily sent and received many of them as well:

These are just a sample of course. I always send KLS/myself lots of cards when I travel, and between them and the ones you sent me I reckon there must have been nearly 100 arriving this year! ?

That’s a wooden card, which made it intact from Australia when I was there in January. Interestingly it only cost the same as a normal card to mail.

Speaking of stamps:

You may have not noticed, but I put a lot of effort into the stamps I put on cards. Specifically I try not to repeat stamps where possible. Watch for this the next you get cards from me. This past year it meant a massive variety of stamps and as usual Australia didn’t disappoint with their pretty and varied selection.

Of course in the name of fun I’ll sometimes repeat stamps:

This year I also took my postcard art to a new level, especially during the days in Hawaii where the hurricane shut everything down:

Many of you received original art this year as well. I hope you treasure it 🙂

Of course some of you reciprocated demonstrating talent that frankly shames mine:

Or created ‘modern art’ using other means:

No summary of 2018 in postcards could be complete without mentioning the dozen or so different Nessie’s I painted on cards sent from Scotland. It took ages but I was very happy with what I achieved…

In a few weeks I’ll be in Oz again, and then very shortly thereafter in Japan. In other words next years cards aren’t too far away. Look forward to them 🙂

The Lost Cards

September 3, 2018

Exactly three months ago today we were in Glasgow, and as usual I wrote and sent postcards from that fair city. Some of those cards featured these stamps:

These are commonly sold in tourist stores around the UK and I’ve used them before (including from many locations in England a couple of years ago). But I have since learned that these stamps are not issued by the Royal Mail (England’s official postal service) and are instead owned by a third party who has a dubious reputation when it comes to actually delivering stamped items.

If you use these stamps, apparently the items (which you put into a normal post box) are not delivered by the mail service, but are instead sent to a clearing house ran by the company that issues these stamps. They then send the collected mail in large quantities to another country with cheaper international rates, and mail it from there. According to what I’ve read these countries are usually in SE Asia, and there are significant delays as a result.

As far as I know only one Glasgow postcard using these stamps (and I believe I sent 10) has arrived – to my parents in Oz. The rest of us are waiting, but since it’s been three months I’m starting to wonder if we’ll wait forever…

I once sent my parents a card from Scarborough, England that took over 6 months to arrive but that used Royal Mail. I fear these Glaswegian cards are forgotten in a box somewhere, or perhaps experienced a grimmer fate.

The lesson is: in the UK, no matter how pretty the alternative, only use Royal Mail stamps (look for the queens head on the stamp). Even if your cards do arrive using these imposter stamps, they will likely be long-delayed!

Robot Claw