Tfl promotion, of TFL and priority seating - please offer me a seat badge and card

 

Very clever ad.

Yes, priority seating was introduced in 2008. I checked on the internet on that date and facts.

I do like their promotion of priority seating.

This is the reminder sign of priority seating.

TFL is the abbreviation for Transport For London.

Priority Seat Badges

In London you can phone or fill in a form to be posted a badge. No questions asked. 

I am in my late seventies and nearly always get offered a seat. Whatever the family tell me about how young I look, when I smile at them which lifts my face, I know the truth. I have a line between my eyebrows. Another giveaway sign, when I don't uplift my face and mouth and brows by smiling, is a downwards line from both sides of my mouth. So the kind people on the train immediately see that I need a seat, especially if I lurch on.

Searching For A Seat On A Train 

When I get on I look anxious. I glance at the nearest seat on my left and right. And then down the line of seats. If the people in the priority seats look older than me, or asleep, often an alert person next them smiles and offers a seat. I always beam and eclaim, "Thank you! How kind of you!"

Useful Websites

https://tfl.gov.uk/transport-accessibility/please-offer-me-a-seat

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Melaka was marvellous but Machap was not

Flag of Malaysia

Fly from Flies At Machap
We hired a car in Singapore, drove up the motorway, stopping to pay the tolls. We drove past the first stop for food point, wanting to get on our way. We stopped for lunch, at the second stop, giving our visitors a glimpse of old days, old ways, Malaysia at Machap. a dire motorway side stop. A food court above the shops. A good place to buy a hat. Not so good upstairs for food and toilets.

Toilets
First the good news. The ladies was easy to find. In the ladies, cubicles were plentiful.

Most of the toilet cubicles were the hole in the ground type. Only after I managed to use one of those, did I discover a door showed a picture of a regular modern toilet.

Now the bad news. The toilets were full of flies. Victorian England, where the outside toilet was at the back of the house behind the kitchen, established a building regulation requiring two doors between a toilet and a kitchen, as a fly trap, to prevent flies zooming from - you can work it out. From toilet to table.

Upstairs at Machap the food court tables were full of flies. I wished I had brought the fly spray from home (Singapore).

The people at Machap, were lovely, so sorry for them having to work amid the flies. The girls covered head to foot in what was traditional garb had another advantage - the girls were in what turned out to be fly-protective clothing, with their hair pushed into headscarves.

I felt conspicuous. I stuffed my blonde hair inside my baseball cap.

I considered a making a badge saying: To answer your question, I'm from London, England.

The wrapped up girls were no different to the conservative Malays in Singapore, all smiling and helpful. A white haired toothless man by a kiosk smiled and when I asked aloud, 'Can anybody speak English. Can anybody translate? I want chicken, ayam, and potato - what's that in Malay?' he was only to keen to help translate.

I ordered chicken, a generous portion of halal meat on the chicken wing, and potato. The rice which I had not asked for came automatically. All on a piece of green banana leaf.

Our visitors from England wanted non-spicy food, preferably vegetarian. I saw Chinese dumplings with filled with dates and other fillings, maybe savoury, maybe sweet, behind glass which saved the cabinet contents from the flies.

We sat down and ate fast, waving flies off our plates. The people were friendly, the flies over-friendly. I counted 16 on the floor and did not count those on the table because I was too busy swatting the ones on the table.

I muttered, 'Why doesn't somebody invest in fly killing machines and daily fogging? Maybe they do.'

We bought wrapped fruit, and canned drinks including Nescafe from a machine to drink in the car.

After Machap, I was so glad to reach Melaka.

Two days later, when we got back to Singapore, my biking family members told me: "As you drive on towards the capital, KL, the standard of motorway stops improves."

Useful Websites
https://www.malaysia.travel/en/sg

About the https://www.malaysia.travel/en/sg
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See my other posts on marvellous Melaka. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Alliteration Tips For Travelling Toastmasters and MCs: A Marvellous Monday and more alliterations

Arriving at a new venue to be an MC (master of ceremonies) or Toastmaster of the Day or Evening is a challenge, especially when faced with a lot of strange names.

What can you do?

1 Name Badges For All
Ask for all the visitors and members and organizers to wear badges. Make sue the names are large enough to see. I have been known to invest a pound or dollar or two in a roll of address labels and a broad tip felt tip pen.

2 Your Own name Badge
Wear your own name badge. Send a picture of yourself with your name badge so that everyone gets the idea that if they don't wear theirs they will be upstaged by you.

3 VIP name Badges
Ask appointment holders to wear their own name badges.
Ask the organizer to print name badges, with the organization's logo - much smarter than hand written.

4 Writing Badges In Advance
Failing all else, to save time at the meeting, write the names in advance on your roll of address labels. Writing out the names and checking the spelling will help you remember them.

5 Pronunciation
Say the names aloud. If you are not sure of the pronunciation, email and ask.

Prepare A Jolly Opening
An alliterative opening can be planned in advance for the day of the week.

Super Saturday
Special Sunday
Marvellous Monday
Terrific Tuesday
Wonderful Wednesday
Thoughtful Thursday
Fantastic Friday

Alliterative Introductions
Start with a Warm Welcome to everybody.

Plan some alliterative introductions. If you can make them fit the personalities, so much the better. Some of them will fit. If they are totally opposite, this can create humour.

Ask for three words to describe each person, their country, profession, hobby.
You can ask if the speaker likes or dislikes something.
"Cathy - do you like cooking?"
You then, according to her answer, continue, "Cathy, who loves cooking / Cathy who hates cooking ..."

Amusing, Angelic Angela. Alex. Alluring Alicia.
Brilliant Brian begins the evening. Bea (pronounced be or bee) whose motto is, 'Be prepared!'.
Conscientious Catherine. Cath the cook.
Charming Chan.
Debonair David is dashing on stage. Dynamic.
Efficient Elizabeth. Earnest who never ers.
Funny Fiona. Frank in Finance. (First / Finally ..) Fast but never furious.
Gorgeous Gertrude. Genial Gina.
Happy Harriet. Handsome Harry. Help me welcome ..
Idealistic Irene. Innovative Ingrid.
Jolly Jennifer. Jovial John.
Kate the Clever one.
Lovely Linda. Lawrence the Life Coach. Last but not least. Lionel the listener.
Marvellous Michael. Mary/ Maria, the mother of five.
Nora is next.
Omniscient Oliver.
Pretty Penny. Peter the plumber. Please applaud Penny.
Philip the father of Three.
Queenie, the quick one.
Reliable Richard. Rich Richard.
Successful Susan, our Secretary. (Starting with Stephen.)
Tall Thomas. Tiny Thomas. Tim our Treasurer, and timekeeper is on time.
Theo, who we must thank. Thoughtful Theo.
Ursula ... says to err is human, but to Ursula is divine.
Valuable Valerie. Victor the VIP. Visionary
Wonderful William, Welcome to Wendy. Worthy Wong.
Xanthe the zoo keeper.
Yvonne, who believes we can achieve.
Zoe - Glowing Zoe, who likes visiting zoos / hates zoos, will tell us the A to Zed (UK) /A to  Zee (USA) of ....

You can create humour by contradicting what you said about them.
For example:
Queenie the Quick is making her way slowly towards the stage.

Make your own desk nameplate.
You can make a triangular Toblerone shape from a folded piece of blank A4 paper. Folded it twice or more to get the desired shape and thickness. It should stand on its own.

Alternatively, you can stick it together with Sellotape (UK brand of sticky tape) or Blutac. Or look for a paperclip, stapler, or elastic band. Look around to see what is spare or can be borrowed for the duration of the meeting and then returned.

Write your name or position in black felt tip pen.

Carry a washable felt tip pen for writing on white boards and on flipcharts and making your own badge to wear, or desktop name plate.

Or make a three-

Here I am displaying my badge.

sided name card from three business cards.

Useful website
https://www.rhymer.com/eve.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, workshop leader.

   

Could you, should you, offer or accept lifts to a writing holiday?

We need a 'travel to Swanwick Writers Summer School' group.

Car Travel I had two lifts from members of my writing group who refused offers of payment.

Later, I gave lifts to people.

On one occasion the person I was assisting turned up late. My relatives who waited to help load up the car and were not pleased. The next year they told the person wanting the lift you must turn up early or within half an hour or risk not getting the lift.

Later, on one occasion I sat alone on a train from London to Derbyshire and at the conference found a new friend who had been on the same train.

If you book a seat you are allocated a random seat and cannot choose to sit near a friend and risk being without a seat if you move or being asked to move out of a reserved seat.to be with a friend.

However, If we could have a system, such as Swanwickers wear a Swanwick badge (make your own by printing a pictures of the Hayes and sit in front carriage, we could find other old friends and potential new friends.

Another idea for those travelling by car would be to have a lift offered and lift wanted system. You might include, a tick box with free, petrol contribution appreciated, and back to your door, or only drop off and collect from designated railway station, or only drop on and collect from my home area which is (your rough location).

Writing Groups There are also writing groups from various areas which regularly send members. So they could offer lifts to people from their area and thus recruit new members for their group.

Train Tickets Or Car For Convenience And Company? One year, on another writing holiday, I had a train ticket. However, I got a lift home to London from an elderly gentleman which I thought would be good to have a chance to recap the week's events and swap stories.

Safety One of the holiday organizers warned me, "Once you leave this holiday, we can't guarantee your safety. We cannot supervise or guarantee anything."

Direct - or Detour! What could go wrong? My driver took a detour. He didn't tell me until after we started driving. he offered to drop me off or continue. The detour took longer than he or I expected because he got lost. This made me later reaching home than I would have been on the train.

On another occasion, my passenger needed to be home on time. In my haste I took the wrong lane and missed a turning off the motorway.

Back to my passenger journeys. On another occasion I was unexpectedly dropped at a station, not on my direct line, which involved changing trains. I had a train pass. However, I faced more stairs and luggage carrying than I had expected.

For me, the whole point of going by car, was to avoid the steps and long Luckily my family were at home and willingly collected me from the station. So after my momentary worry, everything worked out fine for everybody.

Yes, I still found the conversation entertaining and useful. But I learned that it is handy to clarify in advance whether you should offer petrol money, pay for any toll on a bridge, or to buy coffee or a meal at a motorway stop.

Your circumstances and finances could change from year to year. So might your travelling companion's. You could be in a well paid job one year, then retired or divorced the next. Or it could be the other way round. You might start out desperate for money, then find yourself rich and famous and very happy to pay your way or buy meals and gifts.

The arrangement might depend on the finances of the driver, or yours, or simply their attitude to life and yours. It is really simpler to clarity from the start whether you are offering money, a lot, a little, will buy food or drink, or have a gift of a book or flowers.

Know your own personality type. On the Myers Briggs personality typing, there are judgers who like to decide where they are going on holiday and book well in advance, no uncertainty.

Other types, many teachers, are ENFP, P I like to think of as procrastinators, like to have their options open and decide at the last minute.

You also need to know that some types hate to be taken advantage of. Whilst others are nurturers and feel their mission in is to help others, which makes them feel useful.

Many organizations let you know in advance whether you can buy reduced price rail tickets if you buy well ahead.

If your holiday organizers don't have a system going, you could start your own.

Happy travelling!

Useful Websites
writers holiday website
writers summer school website
Facebook page writers holiday
Facebook page writers summer school

London Transport

GWR (Paddington to Fishguard for Writers Holiday annually February)


Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Chatting: Signalling Come and Go and Personal Space

I wrote about the I talk to Strangers badge on Facebook. A friend of mine on Facebook (a real friend who found me on Facebook but knew me years ago from a post graduate literature club) told me on holiday she used body language if she needs to discourage chats from a fellow diner at a hotel who apparently thought she ought to eat the dish he had ordered and in the way he suggested.

Mostly I'd be delighted to chat about food to a stranger, and adopt their suggestions on the principle of try anything once.

She was making another point. That you can use body language to encourage or discourage conversation.

Touching
Closeness is another factor. I recently sat next two three Singaporean friends (two long-standing friends and another I met on an aircraft and chatted to for several hours). In all three cases these ladies were tactile. The first two prodded me with their fingertips to hold my attention when making a point.

Arm Rest
The third was taking over my arm rest. I kept trying to move away each time our arms accidentally touched. I considered putting up a cushion as a barrier.

But we were friends. We were deep in conversation. Since I wanted to be psychologically close to her, I decided physical closeness was the way to go. If you can't beat them, join them. So I snuggled up withy arm comfortably against hers.

Photo Barriers and Linking Arms
On another occasion I was standing in the back row of a group being photographed. The jolly and friendly club committee member standing in front was blocking the view of me by standing arms akimbo. I could not push him out of the way. I instinctively took hold of his elbow. Since did not take the hint to move, I linked arms with him and hugged his arm tightly. Much better visually and psychologically. I was now friends with him in the picture and in life.

As a photographer, if one person is blocking another, you could ask them to link arms.

Angela Lansbury

How To Make Friends And Chat Whilst Travelling

Wear a badge which says, I want to chat. What a great idea. Not chat on social media, but chat to a real person near you.
What a great idea.

I love chatting to people.

A Singapore Taxi Chat
Sitting in a taxi to the airport, I got chatting to the taxi driver. The first comment I/we made was about noticing a new housing development. That led to discussing cutting down the jungle to make way for more houses.

What did the taxi driver think? More housing was needed, he conceded. Then he added an amusing and insightful comment on changing times. "Old Prime Minister (Lee Kwan Yew) planted trees. His son cut them down."

So true; so funny.

You can follow this train of thought in many directions. That each generation does the opposite of the previous generation. That the reason is that everybody wants to be different. That it's the swing of the pendulum. Sons rebelling against fathers.

Planting
In a country, developing and planting faces the same problems as when you plant a garden, as we did in London, England. First you have not enough greenery, not enough shade, not enough plants, so you plant trees and bushes. For a brief period things are just right.

But a few years later the trees are too tall and the bushes are merging and the grass is growing knee-highs if you don't spend every week cutting it down. Soon you are constantly pruning the trees and cutting down the bushes. Finally, you have to cut down the trees you planted.

I could write a poem or a PhD thesis or a book about this, just inspired by one sentence from a Singapore taxi driver. What pleasure from talking to stranger. I am an extravert and love talking to strangers. Maybe I should get a badge. If you get one, maybe one day I shall talk to you.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/i-talk-to-strangers-the-badge-campaign-encouraging-humans-to-actually-engage-with-one-another-a7319996.html

Badges At Hotels And Conferences - save them and re-use them

Many hotels and conferences give you a badge, sometimes on a free lanyard. They might ask you to return the badge or lanyard or both so that the organisers can use the items again. Often they cannot use the lanyard again because it has the date of the event, so next year's lanyard will be a different colour, for novelty, or to go with a new theme or venue, and with a different date.

If the badge is not collected, I save the badge in my suitcase for my next trip. But then, I am a hoarder and recycler. Many people are tidy minded and hate clutter and like to travel light and prefer to give back an unwanted badge. But I carefully keep mine.

At my next networking event, if I arrive before the badges are given out, or no badges are given out, I have one ready to wear. On a recent trip I was given a badge in the name I did not want to use. I was at a writing conference and wanted to use my writer's name which was on the books I was offering for sale in the book room. If your name is wrongly spelling, or the badge shows your married name instead of your maiden name or business name, you might find it handy to swap over the cards.

Swapping the cards is also a handy option if the new conference offers cards which are typed and in small writing and your previous card had bold felt tip pen writing which could be seen at a distance. You might also prefer a neat Italic script, rather than untidy handwriting.

If you don't like the writing on the card you have been given, sometimes you can reverse it. If it is double size and folded in half, turn it inside out.

Some lanyards and cards are designed with the name on both sides, so that if the lanyard is put on back to front or turns itself, the writing is still visible.

You could keep a stencil in your luggage or briefcase or the laptop bag if you are likely to want to add your name or company name to a badge.

Failing all else, you can insert your business card, or a return address sticker, on a blank card.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Americanisms and Britishisms, car, purse

US - UK
automobile - car
button (pin on) - badge (in the UK a button is something you sew on which goes through a button hole
coin purse - purse
license plate - number plate (for car or vehicle)

main street - high street
purse - clutch bag or bag

truck - lorry

UK - USA

badge - button

bag - purse

car - automobile

high street - main street

lorry - truck

purse - coin purse

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker

Packing tips for all occasion

The trick is to have a checklist. Most frequent travellers know they need a neck pillow. But if you have more suitcases than neck pillows you might still go off without yours. The same goes for packing any medication. Keep a checklist.


Checklist of essentials
Four wheel suitcase
Suitcase label and key and coloured label or ribbon for identifying black suitcase
Passport
Tickets
Addresses of people at destination.
Insurance.
Safe pocket for valuables.
Quick release shoes for security.
Small duplicate underwear and socks in case of lost luggage.
Small handy swimsuit and cap.
Conditioner.
Phrase book/dictionary.
Pen and paper.
Reading material.
Phone which is economical at destination.
badge for conference
pills
prescription for ordering spare or replacement spectacles and sunglasses
Evening scarf or cravat

Know-how
Route to hotel.
Method of transport to hotel.
Money for taxi and tip at both ends of journey.
Travel cards for both ends of journey.
Trip details left with family or friends at home.
Emergency details at destination. (eg nearest friend, police station, hospital, number to dial in emergency)
Packing list printed inside suitcase for re-packing at destination
Tin of sardines or similar for emergency in-flight delay or arriving late at night.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3215352/The-ultimate-guide-surviving-long-haul-flight.html