'Find it' tracker for travelling - for passports, or people and more?

I could do with trackers when travelling. What for? My phone of course. What we need as a travelling couple of relatives or friends is find each other's phones - and thus find each other.

What have I lost?
PASSPORT
My passport at American security.

I LOST MY HUSBAND
My husband - when he stopped to change his camera lens in the guided tour of the cellars at Rheims, France.

Missing TIMING
You can avoid missing lots of appointments by setting a timer on your phone or watch.

TAXI
In India I lost my taxi. I remembered my drive had a moustache and I noted the last two digits of the number plate. When I came out of the building, I found it has not one entrance but four. All the car parks had tai drivers who all had moustaches. The car number plates all ended with the same two digits which signified the city, and the fact that were taxi.

FLIGHT
Check the departure gate, even if you are with a group, especially if you are with a group.

My flight - the bossy group leader took all our tickets to the check-in desk. After a twenty minute wait I asked the girl on the desk when our flight was leaving for Washington DC. She told the flight was direct to London, not stopping at Washington DC.
Dinner with friends in Singapore on Saturday night. A relative knew our flight left London on Saturday. He forgot that we were on the overnight flight and would not be arriving at dinner time but breakfast next day.

1 My coat.
2 My passport
3 Items left behind in boxes as you go through security
4 My hat
5 My umbrella
6 My husband - especially at duty free in airports. Also in the lounges when he says, "If you are not back from the toilet in five minutes I am leaving for the gate. I can't afford to miss this flight. Where is he? Ahead of me? Gone to the Gents? Having a final coffee?
7 How about find my check in desk, or boarding gate?
8 Leaders of groups of schoolchildren and groups on guided tours.
9 Children. Those people who get on a plane with five children instead of their usual headcount of six.

10 What about find my waiter? They all look alike. They all wear glasses, or have moustaches, or black hair, or black tee-shirts.

Or find my cruise ship. Once, in the Bahamas, we left our big white cruise ship which was the only one docked, at dawn. When we came back in the evening, at dusk, we saw a line of about ten cruise ships!

Useful Website (advert)
https://getxyfindit.io/blog-xy-find-it-never-lose-your-valuable-possessions/?lpid=1159&utm_source=9171&utm_medium=ad1&utm_term=64004&utm_content=1516&utm_campaign=GU&aff_id=9171&camp_id=64004&sub_id=ad1&req_id=363546888&contract_id=859&oid=516&guvertical=42&gusalespopup=0

Other Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Find_My_Phone

Fort Canning, Singapore, illuminated at night

See the elaborate white grand gates and the giant tree. 

Fort Canning, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I walked past Fort Canning from SIM (Singapore Institute of Management), a complex of university and college departments linked to Bras Basah underground train station by a series of underground corridors. I had travelled to the area by Bras Basah MRT station.

 My new friend had parked her car at a cheaper car park. An uphill walk.However, I was rewarded by passing some interesting sights.

 Fort Canning is the hilltop fort which gives its name to the entire hill and area. We are on the roadside pavement circling the bottom of the grassy slope. Opposite this illuminated gate was the entrance to the museum. I saw two or three grand gates. I took the photo of this gate with my phone, in a hurry to keep up with my friend who was pacing ahead.

 I thought that if the photo was not sufficiently good quality to use, it would still be a useful reminder. I I had noticed only the white gate against the black sky, accentuating the outline of the was pleased with the results. When I I took the picture I was concentrating on the white gate silhouetted against the dark sky. Only afterwards did I notice the orange, green and yellow stripes on the ground.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speakar.

Singapore so Chinese and so pretty

Gate to Chang Pang Gardens housing beside Chong Pang Community Club

How to ensure balcony safety, exit access, select a safer hotel room, buy ladders

Problem
Accidents waiting to happen; recipes for disaster:

Group of youngsters on a holiday or stag party or hen party. All or some drinking or taking drugs.

Low balcony. Four foot high. Or three foot seven inches which somebody says is the UK minimum. Anybody over six foot tall or standing on a chair, or sitting for a photo selfie, or leaning, could have their centre point rather high.

Climbing toddlers or family with several children.

Answers
USA
1 In the USA we were living and travelling a lot with a seven-year-old son. He liked climbing as a teenager and went to climbing walls with his father and his school. The rest of the family thought I was making a fuss. So I ran to reception first whilst they were parking the car and off-loading the luggage. Unbeknown to them, I could ask for a room next to a car parking space, a door not near a road. I could ask to be near a swimming pool to make it easier to have a quick dip and watch over children swimming. Or not near the swimming pool if it had no barriers.

UK
2 In the UK we moved out of a flat with a balcony, third floor, when he was one year old, after I saw him trying to climb onto the balcony railing. We moved to a bungalow.

USA
3 After a famous fire in a Florida hotel I used to book motels instead of high rise hotels. I used to say it was easier to load up luggage. Quicker. Very American. Not so oppressive and towny when seeing the countryside. I had another motive. I would ask for a ground floor room.

USA
4 When I travelled around the USA with a group on a press trip, I sat in the front seat of the coach (bus). I was first off the vehicle on arrival and raced to Reception. I asked if I could have a ground floor room. It took only a second for my room to be switched. (If ground floor rooms were taken and there was no lift I could also ask to be near the stairs or fire exit and for my tall well-built friend who used to carry my luggage to be put in the next door room.)

SAFETY IN SINGAPORE
Many balconies in Singapore have extra railings added. Some balconies are blocked by barriers floor to ceiling.

ACCIDENT POTENTIAL IN ASIA and SINGAPORE
In Singapore we have complained to the management about the fire exit staircase being blocked. Decorators leave huge barrels of paint on the stair wells. You could trip over paint pots in the dark. They would catch fire, fuel the fire and create acrid choking smoke.

Complaints in Singapore
We complained. Management said they would send around a note to every resident in the block asking for the items in the stairwell to be removed. Warning that they had three days. (So another three days in danger!)

Bilingual or four language signs should be on the door warning that items left on the stairs were a hazard and would be removed without notice.

After a week, no letter had come round The items were still on the stairs.

I tell other friends from other blocks about this. They shrug and say that it's the same all over Singapore. When I go back I shall take photos. I might send them to the editor of a newspaper. If I write a letter, I will are branded as a nuisance by people in the block where I am staying and by people in general. Instead I could suggest that the editor should do an article and a campaign.

I could also write to an American newspaper for expats in Singapore. How Safe is Your Skyscraper? Is your fire exit blocked? Or locked?

UK KEY ACCESS
As a landlady in the I checked on every visit to my property that the tenants, whether family, friends, or tenants, had kept the key to the back door within arm's reach for a quick exit. People tend to keep all the keys in a box near the front door. That's no good when you are trying to get out of the back.

Fire Drill
Do a lights off attempt to get out of your house or rental property in less than five minutes. Remove items in the way of the door. Clutter. Remove items blocking the door of the cupboard where the key is kept.

Try it blindfold, using airline masks, (with somebody with you so you don't fall over).

Cambodia
On the first day in a holiday in Cambodia I noticed that the door to the fire exit at the back was padlocked. I looked at the adjoining block. Could the people on the other side put a ladder across the gap from one window to the next? I would not risk that - unless forced out.

From my window to the next block, separated by an alley with a steep drop onto concrete. At least you could wave or shout. But they were a Chinese restaurant.

I went the other way down the corridor. Past the main staircase (which would funnel smoke which might be a barrier. I discovered that there was a front exit onto a balcony near a swimming pool. At least you could shout for help. They could pile cushions up around the area around the pool. (See my previous posts about Cambodia.)

As the person responsible for yourself and a group, it's up to you to check safety. Forewarned is forearmed.

As they say, better safe than sorry. As they say, the life you save may be your own.

Tips
I shall now research exits, signs to exits and so on and add to this article later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hotel_fires_in_the_United_States

http://www.safelincs.co.uk/fire-escape-ladders/
Portable fire escape ladders from about £30.

http://www.fireescapesystems.com/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.

Swimming Safety In the USA and Australia - Lessons For The World

On reading a tragic story about a woman in Florida losing both her small children to an accident (One dead, once critical) in her apartment complex pool, I look at the picture of the swimming pool. It is not gated and the internet news story reports that Florida has more deaths to under fives than any other state.
   I am reminded about safety rules in Australia and other parts of the USA. I visited a Singapore apartment complex (they call the grander ones with swimming pools condos) for a writers' group meeting. The pool was closed off. The reason was a child had just died in the pool. Later I read in the Singapore newspaper that the child had died during a family celebration. I think it might have been a wedding. The mother and the maid (equivalent of a UK au pair or nanny) were both busy preparing food or cleaning and each thought the child was safer with the other person. the child had wandered off and fallen in the pool. Or even jumped in, not realising the depth and danger. I thought back to my earlier overseas stay in the USA and the safety rules in that area.
    USA Safety In Swimming Pools
   When I lived in Rockville, Maryland, way back in the 1980s or 1990s, our complex had safety rules in place. Netting the height of a tennis net surrounded the pool, locking the pool, making it inaccessible to children and adults at all times, except when unlocked by the life guard.
    (The pool was open only in summer. In snowy winter and during cleaning the pool might have been empty or covered, could have frozen over like a dangerous and tempting ice rink, or been concealed under snow.)
   I  understood it was a rule of either or both the local regulations or the insurance that the pool had to be enclosed to prevent access by adults when there was no lifeguard.
    (This prevented all kinds of accidents adults accidents, such as people taken ill, drunks and trespassers) also children (accidents and pranks).
  You had to have two life guards. That ensured somebody could take over if the other one went off to answer a query, eat or use the bathroom/restroom (US terms - UK toilet).      
   The life guards were arranged on a rota. The lifeguards were paid little, but got free use of the pool, experience for a cv. They were often the young adult children of families living in the complex.
   I assumed these rules applied all over the USA, but it must have been only in the suburb of Washington DC where we were living. The Florida pool in a newspaper picture in March 2014 seems to have no barriers.
Australian and New Zealand Safety  in Swimming Pools
   I learned about Australian swimming safety measures when I was on a skiing trip in New Zealand (round trip from UK with stopovers in Singapore). I went to look at the stamp album display at the local post office. The texts under the postage stamps showed the stories behind each postage stamp.
   If I remember correctly, an Australian safety organisation tracked down the accident records from drowning and were surprised to find that most accidental deaths were not in the sea but in the back garden swimming pools. As a result they brought in regulations that swimming pools (and probably ponds) should be fenced in, gated and locked when unoccupied, to prevent children accidentally falling or, or going swimming unsupervised.
    I presume Australia and New Zealand have similar rules.
Learning To Swim
    As soon as I got pregnant I insisted my husband learned to swim. If I had not already been a swimmer I would have taken swimming lessons. At some time you are likely to be near a pool or beach with your children or others. The complexes with pools should organise swimming and life saving.
  Lifesaving Skills
     Whilst anybody can wade into a paddling pool and pull out a baby, it's not so easy saving an adults in deep water such as the deep end of a swimming pool or in waves in the sea if your feet can't touch the bottom of the pool, - especially if the person in trouble is large and heavy.
   I tried to save my mother, a non-swimmer, who crossed into the deep end of a hotel swimming pool, when I was a teenager. I screamed when she went across the line and sank. I jumped in. She grabbed my neck and we both went under.
   You have to know how to turn somebody around and support them from underneath so they don't drag you under.
   Luckily I had shouted and my father, fully clothed, and another man both jumped in. They both took one arm of my mother and rescued my mother.
   I was left to find my way back to the side. I'd been under water for a few seconds. I nearly choked, coughing and spluttering, gasping, trying to doggie paddle back to the side.
  Schools should be teaching swimming and life saving. I realise that you have to have access to a pool to practise. You cannot learn to dance or swim without actually doing it. But the first half of any lesson is when the teacher tells you and shows you how it is done. The expensive part of the lesson is the demonstration.  The demo shows you what to do. It gives you the confidence to try it out. Afterwards you keep practising by yourself.
   Even showing videos of swimming and life saving would be better than nothing. It would encourage children to speak to their parents, or ask their parents for lessons. The parents might then raise funds for school or out of school lessons, write letters to the organisers, or take their children for lessons.
   It would give them the first half of the lesson, so that they would progress faster. Even a non-swimmer in an accident would at least have the blueprint in their mind and some clue as to how to take action to reach the side of the pool or boat. Whilst in many cases just the video is not enough, even if it made the different to one pupil in 100, or one in a thousand, that would be several lives saved every year.
   What are the readers' comments? Some have the same thought as mine - why is that pool not gated? Another comments on babysitter safety rules. An excellent suggestion - when you are in the bathroom and can't supervise the children, you ask them to stand outside the door and you keep talking to them. While listening to them, you know exactly where they are and what they are doing. You hold their attention and can be sure they have not wandered away but are alive and safe.

Travel Tip
   Think about all the situations you might be in and check out what safety devices you can take when travelling. For example, At home you might keep your toddlers in a playpen at home. You probably can't travel with this by plane. But a foldable one probably can go in a car or caravan.
    What about when walking. Young children when walking with you in busy streets, near cliff tops, rivers, beaches, swimming pools etc, could be attached to you, perhaps by extending reins.
   I would not want to fall asleep with a child on a rein. It could get tangled or strangle itself.
   At home you might consider installing a horse box door or bar door, so you can see under or over the door, whilst still having some privacy.
   What about the talking idea - keep children talking when you are in a bathroom. If the toilet has a gap under the door and you are inside, ask to see their shoes.
   Give them something to do. e.g. ask them to read to you from a book, tell you where they want to go later, or for older children, give them a map and ask them to call out details of attractions or instructions for a computer.