Tuesday 12 January 2010

A Shout Out For Some Help

Happy Tuesday everyone!

This has been a challenging week for me in terms of coming up with something to write about.  Fresh of the holidays my brain is a little slow, I've just got to get those creative juices flowing.  My Aunt Jeanette requested a couple of good destination-based topics for later posts, but I'm going to need to do a lot more research if I'm going to write intelligently about a destination that I've never visited.  I guess I'll just have to visit Scandinavia and Greece before my Aunt does so that I can provide some informed commentary.  Don't you all just love how my mind works?

A topic that I've been wanting to cover for a little while now is Communications Abroad.  By that I don't mean communicating in other languages (a separate challenge unto itself) but rather how we all keep in touch while we're away.  I've largely relied on this blog, as well as limited use of e-mails and phone to let people know I'm still alive.  It's been effective, but I know that there are many more options available, especially to the tech-savvy traveler; for example my Aunt and Grandma had some success with Skype while on the go.

Something that Corey brought up just yesterday was the concept of low-planning travel.  Just winging it in terms of accommodations, or even destination.  We certainly did our fair share of that in Japan, but I generally operate on a more focus and pre-planned schedule.

What I'm getting at here is that I've got a couple topics which really interest me, but that I can only speak about in a very limited scope.  So I'm hoping that for the next few weeks while I'm doing my research on other topics (and spending a week in the Dominican, hopefully blogging from there) that maybe we can make this a collaborative effort.  I'm quite certain that everyone who reads this blog regularly has at least one of my e-mail addresses, so please send me your thoughts and experiences on the two topics above and we'll see what we come up with as a group.  Thanks in advance for the help, and we'll see how this little experiment of mine plays out over the next few weeks.

5 comments:

Jabbles said...

I will try and think about something but off the top of my head I would say medication abroad, you already covered a bit while in Iceland but I have heard that some medications while legal and prescribed by a doctor here may be illegal in an other country.

Aunt J. said...

Would appreciate it if you could obtain info on what's required to use your cell phone overseas; I've heard you need a chip and the phone needs to be unlocked?!?
By the way, is today's earthquake in Haiti going to affect your trip to DR?

Jabbles said...

Speaking of earthquakes that would be another topic, what type of natural disasters are possible in the area you are visiting and when. I am sure Colin remembers monsoons in Japan, Gray and I arrived just after the storms.

Spruce said...

How about some fantasy trips? For example, would you rather a tour of Chernobyl or Area 51?

Jabbles said...

Chernobyl would be cool because of the creepy abandoned vibe, well not so much vibe it is creepy and abandoned. It's actually doable to a limited degree, although the free cancer 20 years later is hardly a bonus. Area 51 if the rumors are true would be fantastic, if it's just a military base home to some classified planes it could be neat but it would lose allot of it's charm.