Repairing Clothes Quickly When Travelling

Problems
The elastic goes in your knickers, slip, pants, pyjama bottoms? What do you do?

Answers
Carry a sewing kit with a safety pin in it. Use the safety pin to make the waist smaller.

Alternatively use the safety pin to attach the lower garment to an upper garment.

Sew a dart in the loose waist. If the cotton colour does not match, turn the garment inside out and sew a pleat so the wrong colour cotton does not show. Have the shortest stitch showing at the front, the longer side of the cotton at the back.

Spare Buttons
Many sewing kits contain a spare button and / or a press stud. If you add a short piece of ribbon, in an emergency, you can quickly sew on a loop for the button, Chinese style.

You can also buy press on buttons.

A spare tie pin can also be used as a temporary fix for fallen or torn garments.

If you have a stain, it can be hidden  but a button, or a pin on corsage - a real or silk flower.

Spare Elastic
If you need elastic in a hurry, a hair band from your pony tail, a set of elastic hair bands from the nearest accessory and souvenir shop or supermarket, even one dropped on the ground, abandoned and dirty, can be picked up, washed and dried.

The plastic 'rubber' bands which people drop everywhere - Singapore and London, can be used in an emergency to hoist or tighten clothes. They won't last long, but will probably last for an evening. You can either cut them into strips or press the circle into a double line. Make sure to sew down the ends of your long loop.

Sewing Service
In a three, four or five star hotel you can get help from, the valet service, the room cleaner, the attendant at the club lounge, the concierge, porter or receptionist, or phone housekeeping. Even in a little guest house, the owner or a fellow guest may be able to help you. Somebody might lend you a safety pin, needle or cotton.

If you are in a restaurant or at a conference in a hotel, even if you are not staying at the hotel, somebody might be able to help.

Appeal For Help
At any kind of conference where they make announcements, a joking announcement can fill a boring gap and wait between speakers. You or somebody else can say, jokingly, "Does anybody have a needle and cotton? A guest's underwear is falling down. Wait, she's frantically waving. I'm not to say that. It's her skirt. No, I'm not to say that, I'm just to ask for a needle and cotton. Hands up if you have a needle and cotton. Hands up if you wish you had! Does anybody have another solution. Ah - our saviour!  A guest has been saved from embarrassment. We've all been saved from embarrassment. A Mrs Sewing Kit. A warm round of applause for save the day Sally / Sarah / Dolly."

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.  If you are working and want to come back and read more later, you also follow and email a link to yourself. Please share links to posts.

Secrets of Singapore Buses - driving you loopy!

Some buses are easier than others but most are easier than you think.
This picture shows the handy information sign overhead on the 184 from Bukit Panjang DTI (meaning Downtown Line first stop). It continues along the main highway via Downtown line railway stations Cashew dt2  and Hillview Dt3 and Beauty World to Clementi to Clementi CC (Community Centre).

The word Clementi is on the front of the bus.

Problem
I visited the Clementi Community Centre for a Toastmasters International meeting. When I came out I expected to find my return bus stop on the other side of the road.

As in the UK and other places in Singapore the numbers of several buses are on the post of the stop as well as given in detail in the bus shelter over nearby seats.

I asked the driver of the ext bus which stoppef where i could find my bus. He pointed over the road.

I replied, that.s where i got off. Now i want to go home in the other direction.

He explained, "It is a loop".

On the retun I had only a printout of the girst half of the route. On my outward journey I had looked out of the winow on my left on the pavement (in the USA you call it sidewalk). I watched the stops' names and looked right for landmarks as well as signposts trying to visualise the city state map.

In the evening it was dark outside and the windows were misted and I was on the wrong side of the bus.

However, when somebody rang 'bus stopping' on a button above my head I realised that the stop buttons are not only on the pillars beside the doorways. You can reach them from other sears without having to leap up well in advance and risk being thrown off your feet standing as the bus swings around a corner or brakes for your stop.

In addition the bus stppoing overhead panel alternates with the name of the next stop.

Story
When I first came to Singapore in the 1990s I always took the MRT rather than the bus. Back in the bad old days fewer buses were air conditioned.

But now that I have had to take a bus which goes door to door to some locations instead of taking three train lines and changing twice at train stations with long underground walks at stations plus, staircases or escalators of lifts, plus a longer walk at both ends, I have started to appreciate buses.