How To Record Your Travels In Notebooks and Online

 

It is useful to record all your travels. You can do this in a physical book such as your family history books. Or a five year diary, with your own index at the back or flyleaf.

Microsoft Excel

Also keep a spreadsheet. Use Microsoft Excel. For anybody who doesn't know excel, don't be put off by the technical sounding title. Its just a grid like a chessboard. You have columns and can write names or numbers down the side or across the top.

It will probably be loaded on your computer as part of the software provided. Look down the left hand column on your screen or do a search for it.

For example, you could have separate pages for different aspects. If you are not confident about excel, just make bulleted or numbered lists of years down the left margin. Countries visited alongside each year.

Have you forgotten when you went where? What can you use to fill in dates? 

1 Your diary notes.

2 Passport stamps and visas.

3 Employment dates.

4 Maps and guidebooks often have printing dates showing the year printed or dated advertising offers. 

5 Letters and postcards with date cancellations on the stamps.

6 Financial records such as payments for airfares.

7 Old emails from hotels and restaurants confirming bookings or offering discounts.

FAMILY HISTORY

These records can also be used to write up the history of your ancestors and parents, uncles, aunts, grand-parents. My late uncle had told me about his trips to the USA. I wondered whether had had made them up, or forgotten. Then I found the dates in his passport. I knew the year, the month, even the day he arrived and left. And which city.

8 Census records

9 Blogs

10 Facebook photos

11 Bus tickets. Parking tickets. Traffic fines. Official notes.

Details to add

I like to know the names of places visited, not just the countries. I like to know the cities, towns or villages or scenic spots. I add hotels, restaurants, museums.

You might add people, your friends and family. Restaurant owner, or anybody in your photos. 

I label photos as soon as I can, on the day or when  I get home.

At very least you can settle arguments. Did we ever visit such and such a place? Which year. What was the name of the restaurant I can recommend to my friend? Is it still there?

Useful Websites

Look inside. Starts with your personal details, then a packing list. Journal for a particular trip:

https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Record-Book-Log/dp/1521863407?asin=1521863407&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

https://www.wordtemplatesonline.net/travel-log-template/

https://www.bulletjournaladdict.com/planning/21-best-bullet-journal-year-at-a-glance-spreads/

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html

ttps://4kweeks.com/products/poster

About 60 dollars (plus postage)

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tips_for_road_trips#Q6739884

https://www.bulletjournaladdict.com/planning/21-best-bullet-journal-year-at-a-glance-spreads/

About the author

About Angela The Author

The Author - Quick Quotations

Angela Lansbury B A Hons  is the author of ten books by regular publishers plus another ten self-published books. 

About Angela The Speaker & Trainer

Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Vice President  Public Relations, Immediate Past President.

Former Area Director S3. Club Coach for Nee Soon South Toastmasters Club.

Also Member of: TCA Toastmasters Club; Singapore Online Dynamic; Harrovians UK

The recent meeting of BHA included Garen Tee on using story telling in business, on bha.learncool.sg . Also an educational on using Powerpoint for posters.

Next BHA meetings, (subject to revision)

1 (Saturday, May 15th, was 2 pm Singapore time, postponed because of national speaking contest.) 

After Vesak day and Hari Raya: 

Postponed to Saturday May 29th, 2021, at 2pm. Login to bha.learncool.sg earlier.

Workshop by Sam Chou.

2 Next June meetings 1st Wednesday evening June 2nd at 7 pm Singapore time. 

3 Third Saturday afternoon, June 19th, Singapore time.  Thanks to the old team and Inauguration of New Team. 

Special speech with slides about teamwork in sport and Toastmasters International and life, by the President of West Coast Toastmasters Club who often help BHA with workshops and invite us to give speeches at their club.

Inauguration of new committee by incoming Area Director of S

About Angela The Blogger 

Angela has several blogs on speeches, comedy and song writing and organizing, writing intermittently, but writes almost daily on these three:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

See next post on sculptor Tom Harvey.

Please share links to your favourite posts. 

The information on Toastmasters is updated regularly.

Why You Should Sign And Date Signatures And Photos

Problems
How old was I then? Was that in our first house? What was the name of the hotel? Who are these people?

Answers
I now label photos and paintings with my name, the date, and the place.

On the back of the photo you can stick a detailed label. A smaller one on the front can be seen when the photo is framed, and is security in case the label falls of the back. You might not have space on the front and not want to damage the picture's surface.

In a painting you don't have much space and don't want to distract.

I have experimented with putting my name on a poster as part of the picture. Some artists like to use a symbol. Two different people have used a mouse. One was a carver in the north of England.

Stories
1 I have a photo of a wedding group in a back garden in the East End of London. I wish I could identify it.

Is a member of my family in it? Could it be my grandmother's wedding?

I don't recognize the bride nor any of the people. Maybe it's a member of my mother in law's family? But, if so, it's also a member of my extended family, because I married a second cousin (my husband's late mother was my late mother's first cousin.)

I have labelled the back of the photo '1910?' I was going through my family history and noted the date of my grandmother's wedding, 1910. (My mother was born in 1912, two years later.) I have a photo of the wedding couple on the upstairs landing of their house. She is not the same woman as the bride in the photo.  She is wearing different clothes.

2 Why did she not label the photo at the time? Most people do not label wedding photos. The bride and groom know each other and their parents. But the photos will be kept and passed on to grandchildren. By the time the grandchildren are teenagers or in their twenties and interested to look at the photos, or do family tree research, the grandparents will probably be dead, their full first names, surnames, maiden names, and married surnames not recalled, especially if the grandchildren knew granny as as 'Nan' or Bubba' or 'Granny Sally'.

3 I was talking to a group on one of my themes, Why You Should Write Your Family History. I showed a picture of my wedding and told the audience they should label their wedding photos. I turned over my photo and realised that I had not labelled my own wedding photo! I have now remedied that.

4 My full maiden name is Hazel Angela Lansbury. That's a lot to put on a drawing. I dropped the Hazel after I left school where teachers called me Hazel and fellow pupils had nicknamed me Nut.
(When I looked for a name for a publishing house or a stage name for performing comic poetry I found that Hazel Nut is copyrighted as a brand name by all the nut producers. I had to quickly take Hazel Nutter, which is fine for comedy, being amusing, but too silly for any other business.)

Signature
I needed to condense my name to fit into a tiny space when drawing caricatures in the small notebooks, A6 or postcard size. I often drew the picture, then found very little space in the corners for my signature.

I now have a new system. When I remember, I sign the page before I start drawing. This has two advantages:
1 I leave sufficient space for the signature and date.
2 I don't forget.
3 The person being drawn getting impatient or called away, or the event end, doesn't make me close the sketch book quickly before I have time to finish.
4 I can discuss the location or my signature as a distraction to the sitter to get them used to sitting without starting with the nerve-wracking and tense instructions to sit still and look this way commands.

Abbreviating My Signature
At first I abbreviated my signature to Angela. But there are many people called Angela. When I tried to get Angela, combined with London, recalling the author Jack London, I found that at least a dozen people already had that idea. That's why my email is not Angela but Anna. I decided to change my signature from Angela to Angella. That also combines ANGELA and LA nsbury.

You might like to remember that when looking at my signature, or when creating your own, or suggesting a name for a person, or business.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, illustrator. I have many posts on painting and destinations. Please bookmark and share your favourite posts.

New Year Resolutions For Travellers

Ten Commandments For Travellers
1 LABEL PHOTOS
You will label every travel photo with the place and names of people in the photo - with correct spellings
2 NOTE ADDRESSES AND OPENING TIMES
You will check address, phone, email, opening times of every place you intend to visit
3 SEND PHOTOS AS THANKS
You will send photos of people taken to their phone the day you took the photo - better still within ten minutes of taking the photo (because you won't have time later and will not have their details)
4 PLAN GIFTS
You will ask people you are visiting their favourite foods or desired gifts from your point of departure
5 RECORD GOODS TO REPORT LOSS AND CLAIM INSURANCE
You will record all make, model and serial numbers of cameras phones and laptops you might lose travelling, and send a duplicate to another office or person not travelling with you, and at a different home/office address. Keep copies of insurance on fridge at home in case you end up in hospital.
6 STORE TRAVEL CLOTHES SEASONALLY IN ORDER
You will store summer clothes on the left (in wardrobe/closet/basement/attic), also grouped by colour for quick retrieval and quick packing
7 DUPLICATE DOCUMENTS AT SECOND LOCATION
Your passport and travel documents will be in a place for everything and everything in its place.
8 STORE PACKING LIST VISIBLY
Your packing list will be typed and printed and fixed to your suitcase lid, with a duplicate on the back of your wardrobe door at home, and a duplicate photographed and stored on iCloud
9 PACK LANGUAGE LISTS OR BOOKS
You will travel with a phrase book for every country you are visiting
10 LEARN A LANGUAGE
You will learn 1000 words of a new language each year (3 words a day every day of the year) so each year of your life you can speak enough to get by in a new language. (For me this year it is Spanish.)

Let's do something. Next post on Spanish words.

What are your new year resolutions? Mine include finishing my two books of the year, a Quotations Calendar and my unpublished best selling novel.