travel
february 07, 2006
be prepared.
It does appear that as a child I took the boy scouts' marching song very much to heart and have over the years, become more and more concerned about preparation. I write lists. Sometimes I actually even do the stuff on the list - but more than anything else I like the concept of a list whether it is a To Do List, a Places To Visit List or a Top 5 Desert Island Disc List.
While there is a control freak element of my personality which takes delight in making lists and knowing what to do next, there is underneath the control freak, a person who is very worried about stuff not turning out quite right. In the back of my mind there exists a tremendous list of things that might happen and often I seem to think about ways in which I can prevent them, or survive if they do eventuate.
That at least is one reasonable argument for why I get so fixated about packing lists for travel. Then there's the other aspect of working out what to source and pack and purchase. It is an awful lot of fun.
Preparing stuff for a trip is all about day dreaming the future. For example the purchase of my new jacket has allowed me to dream of unknown yet highly advanced snowboarding skills, wind across icy Siberian tundra and the shock of cold weather when I arrive in Shanghai. Not only did finding vacuumed packed disposable underpants pique my love of unusually packaged products, but I was able to imagine surviving the limited opportunities to do laundry whilst on the Trans-Mongolian railway.
But there are certain pre-departure decisions which are far more concrete than the possibility of rain or a luggage delay. What should I take away as my initial book?
I've already read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which would be the obvious choices for train travel across the steppes. Something about China would be great, but any book which criticised the Chinese government could be confiscated on arrival. Crime and Punishment is about to be completed and quite frankly Dostoevsky can be a bit too serious, I'm not sure if I could read any more straight away. There's an obscure travel book by Peter Fleming called The News from Tartary which I would love to take away, but I only have a hardback copy and it's a hard book to find.
So, even though I'm heading nowhere near India on the forthcoming leg of my travels, the two books that I would like to read while travelling are Shantaram and A Suitable Boy. I have to admit, I've already read both of them and they are both firmly in the Desert Island Books Top 5 list. Both books are huge as well.
Now, if I can only convince Dan to read them, I'll only need to carry one at a time.
pipstar @ 10:40 PM | link | Comments: **
january 31, 2006
rush faster
While there's still another 46 days to go until I head off to China, Dan is spending the next six weeks jetting between Adelaide and Japan to snowboard, returning to A-town to crew on Donny - The Rock Opera at The Adelaide Fringe and then heading off to go snowboarding again.
Really, I'm not jealous at all.
Anyway, all this toing and froing means that Dan has to get everything packed up, stored or sold in about 15 days. At the same time he'll be helping to provide a spectacular AV experience for Donny, celebrating his 27th birthday and getting all those pesky pre-travel things sorted. Like visas.
As we're planning on travelling across to Europe by the Trans-Mongolian railway we have to get visas for China, Mongolia and Russia sorted out. Obviously, the Chinese visa is the one we needed to sort out first and Dan needs his passport back so he can fly out on February 7th.
So, on Friday January 20th we sent off our passports and visa applications. I have to admit, we'd intended to send them off on Thursday, but I'd stupidly brought my British passport along instead of my Aussie one. (one day's delay)
I've been experiencing a slightly more relaxed view of time now that I'm only working in the afternoons (telemarketing kids - it pays the bills), so I personally didn't take weekends and public holidays into my calculations of when we'd get our passports back. 4 working days of visa processing, 2 or 3 working days of postage to Canberra, 2 or 3 days postage back?
She'll be right mate...
But then I began to think about Australia Day last Thursday and Dan's imminent departure to Japan. What happens if the mail was slow? What if our passports were lost in the post - even though they were sent by registered mail?
So I took a visit to the Chinese Embassy website to find out how to contact them to check up on how our visas were going. And I found this notice:
NEW NOTICE FOR CHINESE NEW YEAR! IMPORTANT CHANGE!
HOLIDAYS
2006/01/16
NOTICE
For Australia's National Day, the Visa Office is to be closed on January 26th.
For Chinese Spring Festival Holiday, the Visa Office is to be closed from January 30th to February 1st and reopened on 2nd.
While we'd considered delays due to Australia Day we hadn't even thought about how Chinese New Year might affect our applications.
So, I rang Dan and explained the situation and understandably he freaked out and we worked out a back up plan if our passports weren't going to be sent back until Friday...
Dan could fly to Canberra and pick up his passport by hand. Or he could pay for an emergency replacement passport (which would require 4 days of processing anyway and a new Chinese visa). I even generously offered to go to Japan in his place - I've always wanted to learn how to snowboard and at least the tickets wouldn't go to waste! Of course I immediately regretted saying that and whenever I mentioned how lucky it was that I had two passports Dan would send me a very dirty look.
Not only was Dan's trip to Japan in question - but it looked like he was questioning my worth as a girlfriend...
Cue an evening of super stressed Dan and Pippa
I swear, never before have I seen Dan look so stressed or so relieved.
Now of course he has to organise an Irish working holiday visa in the two weeks between the Japan trips.
Can anybody send me some Xanax? I can feel a fortnight of panic attacks coming on.
pipstar @ 01:44 PM | link | Comments:
january 30, 2003
view from above
