Is your family safe while travelling? Motorbikes in Singapore and worldwide

I am going to tell you about luck, police investigate, DIY first aid, and the cost of repairs to vehicles.

Singapore Flag

Lucky Numbers And Sale Prices In Singapore
 In Singapore buyers of motorcars and bicycles are interested in the car or bike having lucky numbers in the numberplate.  Eight is lucky. Number four is unlucky inspiring death because the word for four sounds like death. The good news is that if you have to sell your vehicle, you will get a better price if it has eights in the numberplate, and if you are buying you can pay a lower price for a vehicle with fours in the numberplate.

Flag of India

Indian Safety & Insurance
I am a Westerner, a Caucasian, so I am more inclined to rely on caution and prevention - and insurance. I was amused in India to see vehicles plastered with images of sacred cows and Gods, supposed to protect the vehicle.

I was less pleased to learn of the high accident rate, to see cows wandering along the motorway towards or across traffic, or lying dead in the road. The accident rate was scary.

Superstition & Prevention
I read a book about superstitition and an investigation was done in hospitals. It was found that the days 12 and 14 were no luckier than the 13th of the month in terms of admissions and deaths. Another finding was that swift attention and acurate diagnosis of  illness and injury affect statistics. So a quick response by medics on bikes to both heart attack victims and road accident victims saves lives in countries such as states in the USA which have introduced such a service.

 At weekends and holidays when medics are in short supply, overworked by drunk drivers causing accidents, or junior doctors are on call in hospitals and reluctant to attend quickly at evenings and weekends and national and relidigous holidays you get less attention and less quick attention and less accurate diagnosis.

My Many Accidents
I have been in several accidents. Once as a driver turning right at the lights in the UK.

UK flag

Now I understand why many junctions do not allow right hand turns, or prevent traffic oncoming, only allowing each lane to move seaprately.

Once, in 1984, as a pedestrian in a crowd crossing the road in Corsica. The moral of the story was, look both ways when starting to cross and reaching the centre of the road. Try not to cross a road below the brow of a hill. Remember that in the UK, cars are on one side of the road, in France and Corsica they drive on the other side.

Later, my car was hit from behind on a motorway in England. (By a dozy driver who had just come to the UK on an overnight flight from the Indian subcontinent.)


In Singapore I waw a passenger in a car which hit a pedestrian. (The pedestrian was jaywalking so was deemed at fault. The driver was in a hire car so any fault in maintenance was not the driver's fault.)



Singapore flag

I was reminded of all these factors this week when my husband came off a bike after being hit by a vehicle in Singapore. Since he rides for business and pleasure, on public roads and on racetracks, has taken courses by professional drivers, and watches racing on TV, he has been in or seen many accidents. You need to think of prevention of accidents and cure.

As far as I know, he was not doing anything wrong or careless. His bike was not out of fuel. He was wearing a helmet.

He claimed another vehicle hit him from behind. Fortunately they were near a junction so public independent cameras recorded the incident. In any case drivers have a duty of care and if it can be shown that you are hit from behind, even if you are stationery, it is the fault of the driver which hits you, in the UK as well as Singapore. (You can check with the insurnce company, the AA, or your lawyer.)

Photo Records
It is useful to take a picture of the position of the vehicles after the accident, to remind yourself and as evidence. Photos might show signalling and skid marks on the road. The length of the skid mark might indicate direction, position and speed. You also need the damage to the vehicles.

I like a record of the people involved (in case they give false identities or you lose their details). But they probably won't want to be photographed, suspecting you might have some ulterior motive such as blackmail, character assassination, revenge, who knows.

If you have a dashcam (dashboard camera) that will automatically record the other vehicle with the people inside and them as they get out, without them taking issue with you for photographing adults or children.

Statements
Insurance companies tell you not to admit you are in the wrong (to the other party) as this can be used against you by the other party's insurance company. Your insurance company might take issue with you. Check your insurance document. You will probably be able to find the clause which tells you not to say anything, because that might invalidate your claim.

Preserving Personal Documents
It would be handy to have your identity on your person, not in a bag left behind in a broken down or inaccessible vehicle. Imagine trying to claim for a car which burns out when you have jumped out and left all your documents in the glove box with no record on your person nor at home nor in the workplace.

So it's handy to keep records duplicated on your person and elsewhere. Also a credit card or travel card in your pocket in the event that you have to leave your vehicle and travel onwards or back home on public transport or must hire a vehicle.

The same goes for a driving license, even if you were not planning to drive.

Another useful item is some kind of first aid. Even a plaster to cover a wound, and a length of sterlile bandage and a piece of waterprrof tape or a safety pin. Plus a quick link to a first aid book or website and a knowledge of  first aid. I have a first aid kit in the boot (Americans say trunk) of my car in the UK. However, if you are hit from behind and the boot is not accessible it is handy to have a plaster in your pocket or purse. (The British word purse is more like wallet, whilst the Americans use the word purse to mean a small bag.

First Aid
By chance the very day of his accident, the Singapore government had delivered to every resident in the neighbourhood a fridge magnet with advice on DIY first aid for burns, scalds and accidents and emergency number.

The Magic of Ice Packs
The ice pack advised for reducing pain and swelling for minor scalds was also useful in reducing the swelling on his leg. First he photographed the injury, the blood and the swelling. Then showered to remove dirt which could infect the grazing. Finally we secured an ice pack to his leg with large rubber bands. We used face flannels to protect his skin from ice burn or being indented by the rubber bands.

Morale
Often you are busy tending to the injury and trying to reassure the patient. Only the next day or the next week do you start to feel anxious, especially as you tell family or friends or colleagues or relive events for a hospital report or police or insurance assessors who look at the vehicle, as well as the repair shop.

By now we are quite philosophical. Although shaken, we keep telling ourselves, we were very lucky. It could have been much worse. We are the survivors.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

A quick look at Wikipedia, copyright and high resolution photos

Problems
The information given with each photo on Wikipedia is far too long to copy.
It take an hour or two to read all the pages, digest, re-read to grasp the essentials.
The information is constantly expanding.
I used to copy photos and it was fine. Now they are all blured. Why? How can this be fixed.

Answers
Every now and then I go back. Here's a summary of my conclusions which are relevant to use on a travel blog.

COPYRIGHT
Many amateur, professional or retired photographers and writers would be glad to allow their photos to be reproduced without charge in exchange for a photo credit. They want the status, which might lead others to commission paid work.  So you can use their work without paying on condition that you name the photographer and equally importantly don't pass the work off as your own or try to get paid for selling it and copyrighting it.

There are at least three strings to copyright.

PERMISSION
One is having the palaver of writing to the author for persmission. Why would you do that? Why would they ask you to do that if they are not charging? If I put a free photo ofmy local high street or church up on the webs, and it never gets used, I might not bother to put up any more because it seems like a waste of time. If I am doing it to get famous, and nobody tells me they've used it, I might be disappointed.

On the other hand from a user's point of view, if I have to write to ten people for permission to use photos in a book or a blog, that's another hour or so of my time. It would be quicker to photograph a pack of butter from my fridge, or a rose from my garden.

Would it? I have to edit my pictures. Remove my foot, my shadow. Even allowing the time to edit out the litter and too much sky, and bring it into focus, and enhance the colour, sometimes I would rather take my own photo than send off emails and waiting for replies - or look for the person who took the online phoot to give them credit.

CREDITING THE AUTHOR
Look at it this way. William Shakespeare's sonnets are out of copyright because so much time has passed that they should be out of copyright in every country. However, you can't pass off a Shakespeare sonnet as your own or charge people for it.

Why hide the name of the author of the quotation? Your painting of the rose is probably enhanced by a short quotation from somebody famous.

But you have to look up the copyright owner of the text. I wanted to quote a ballad in a book of poetry. It sounded like it had been written in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I was shocked to find that it was written by an American academic, who was still alive.

A very clever man. Wonderful to write a poem which becomes a classic in your own lifetime.

I quickly had to cut out most of the poem. I left, an opening line and the ending line, added lots of comments on the style, and gave attribution to the author and said where you could go to see more.

Wikipedia talks about derivative works. What's a derivative work? If you were to publish an out of copyright text such as, 'my love is like a red, red rose', the original text is still to be attributed to the original author. You might sell a drawing of a giant rose, with the text small in one corner, but you should put the name of the original writer or the words at the end of the words.

(Post being expanded - I'm saving it so as not to lose it and so you can benefit from what I have written so far.)
Information on High resolution in my next post.

I used to end my blog posts with 'please share my blog posts'. However, I don't want people copying my words as if it were their own. I want to get more readers for my posts.

Why does the number of readers matter?

1TIME ALLOCATION
Because if I had fewer than three readers my family would tell me, 'Stop wasting your time and make lunch'.

2 MORALE
Because an increase in readers raises my morale.  I used to wodner if writing a blog was inrerior to spending time wirting a book. But I can see instantly if one subject rather than another is popular. I've had article published in magazines and newspapers which claim to have a million readers, but no evidence that a single person unknown, or a single person I know, has ever read the article.

But a writer's reputation is cumulative, and enduring. People come up to you years later.

A PR lady for Cumbria said, "I read something about you and the Kennedy museum in Dallas years ago. I don't read American newspapers. I read the Guardian. They must have copied it from a news agency."

I was thrilled. I was famous? An end to the lack of confidence which somebody clever later labelled as 'imposter syndrome', feeling I was just pretending to be a writer.

3 Because I want to help readers, and restaurant owners, and share news of great discoveries. If a tourist board has given me help, they deserve to be given a mention. If a new restaurant opens, they deserve a mention, a boost. The readers need to know if it is worthwhile going, and what is good value, and whether it is worth the money to splurge.

4 When I go onto affiliate programs they tell me that I must have so many readers here and there, on Facebook and other media, on a blog.

COMPETITION
Other writers boast that they have so many readers. If you want a bigger readership, you write about fashion and football. But BBC2 and BBC3 and BBC4 operate on the principle that lovers of minority interests deserve to have their subjects mentioned.

COMPETING AGAINST YOURSELF
5 I watch my readership all the time. I find it more exciting than playing a lottery. I always win. I compare readers all week, all day, and right now. I compare the numbers of readers in the US, Russia, Italy, the UK and ... A general post gets more readers from the USA - because there are more of them. But a review of an Italian restaurant brings in readers in Italy and they stay all month. Write about a Russian statue and the Russian readers leap up the league table.

I can see that I am getting more readers today than yesterday, more this month than last month, more this year than last year.

Should I write a post about a subject which gets most readers? Or turn to writing about a country where I have few, to boost my readership there?

You, my dear reader, are contributing to my daily excitement. Thank you.

USEFUL WEBSITES
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

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

WHY YOU SHOULD RECORD YOUR SUCCESS STORIES, TRAVEL AND MAPS

Problem - What Is Your Success Story?
I went to a Toastmasters International club meeting in Singapore where everybody around the table had to say their name and their greatest success or total success so far this year - or the success they hoped to achieve in the rest of the year.

Some people knew immediately what they had achieved (such as 'I passed such and such an exam'). I have been learning Portuguese, have given a workshop on writing your life story, and plan more workshops.

Several visitors gave vague answers. Some repeated what others said (such as I also plan to watch more films). Others paid repeated compliments to the hosts (my greatest success was coming here and meeting you!)

Raising Your Morale
I read in an article on curing depression and sad moments that you could energise yourself and keep up moreal and energy by creating a success book or a success wall.

Boasting and Introductions
Talking to yourself is not the same as talking about others. To boast of yourself, your spouse, your children or your grandchilden might annoy others, especially if their family is not equally successful.

Rags To Riches
But another speaker/trainer told us that if you spoke only of your past and current successes when introducing yourself as a speaker, you would alienate the audience. They would envy you and consider you boastful (or even a liar).

Chairperson's Introduction To You
The chairperson's job is to introduce the speaker in glowing terms. The speaker should appear modest and share secrets of certain success.

Achievable Success
What is certain success? 'You can do it' or 'a journey starts with a single step' is a great message for the timid person who is afraid to start a simple task.

Small Steps On The Ladder
However, another method is to break the task into simple steps and show somebody how to start and where to get free and easy help.

Typical Questions
What if you are in a conversation and greeted enthusiastically and asked lots of questions? I get asked these questions and you are likely to be asked something similar:
C - conversation starter for rapport.
FAQ ABC Frequently Asked Question - intended to get information for future action, business, commitment.

How long have you lived here (in this country)? C
Where do you live/stay? C 
What do you do for a living? FAQ (Do I say, teacher, semi-retired, author, workshop leader?)

Which country do you come from? C (My answer is London, England. However, I am a Singaporean Permanent Resident.)
How many languages do you speak? C (Fluent French - and learning other European languages such as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German.)
Do you speak fluent ....? C FAQ My child needs help with homework. Join our bilingual club. Our nearby school needs a foreign language teacher. Can you help me pronounce this word correctly ... (My answer is yes, if you pay me enough.)
Where did you learn to speak C French? (Grammar School A level.) FAQ - where can I learn to do it as well as you?
How long have you been married? (Too long!) C or FAQ meaning are you single, eligible, lonely, looking for a liaison?
Do you have children? C FAQ (Are you busy with family? Or free evenings and weekends to do a job or help me?)

When are you leaving? (I yo-yo between England and Singapore.) FAQ Our meeting is next week. Are you free?
When will you be back here? FAQ When can we meet? (If you want me to give a workshop, I'll be around in (month).

They all sound simple questions. Yet I and others struggle to answer them. If different members of the family give different answers, it sounds as if at best you are confused, at worst you could be lying. It helps to make a list and agree on which date you arrived in a foreign country (unless you and other members of the family arrived on different dates - in which case you need to be clear on which of you arrived which month and year).

Recording and Remembering Your Past
Firstly there's forgetting. Which year did I live in the USA?
1986. We lived in Rockville, Maryland; Stamford, Conecticut. We visited 25 of the 50 US states. (How you count states is another story, which I have dealt with in a post.)

Which  year did I first set foot in Singapore? 1993.

I became a Singapore Permanent Resident in 1999.

I joined Toastmasters International in the UK around 2005, the year my late father died. I recall a member of HOD Toastmasters coming to the funeral prayers. (My T I online home page in 2026 records 2004.)

My husband and I started an online travel diary in 1999 which lists every travel destination and trip.

Invitations To Meet Or Speak
The other important thing is to give a succinct story. When somebody asks: 'when will you be back?', you really want to know: 'Why are you asking?' "Are you making polite conversation, or planning to meet in future and tell me about events?'

If they want to invite you to a meeting on July 1st and you are leaving on June 30th, you can't accept. (They don't want to hear your entire life story, year's plans, reasons for travel. job history, spouse's change of job, children's school exams, parents health - and still no clue as to whether to speak to you and send an invitation!)

What they really want is your phone number or email. They want permission to put you on the mailing list and enquire which date in the year you are definitely in the country to give a talk.

The way to appeal to an audience, according to many coaches and experts (and slides issued by Toastmasters International for talks) is to tell self-deprecating stories so the audience can feel superior, and feel and share your joy in overcoming difficulties.

The success may be due to:
1 Simply persisting until you get a lucky break - meet the right person or opportunity.
2 Persisting until you achieve the skills, pass the exams. This means not retreating at the first setback, and having a realistic idea of whether you might encounter setbacks yet still succeed.

Travel to multiple coutnries as an aim presents what at first sight is simply a collection. Add one new country a year and you are making progress. Along the way you might learn languages, find new foods, make friends, find a life partner, get offered a job, like a country and settle overseas.

To get a sense of progress, it helps to have a year by year list so you can see how your knowledge and travels have grown. You can keep many kinds of lists:

A map of the world.
A list of countries visited.
A list of words learned in other languages.

A list of successes such as:

ATTITUDE: diet; exercise; holidays; meditation; mindfulness; NLP; relaxation; stress-control; yoga.
BUSINESS / CONTACTS: Contacts in each country, each type of business. Purchases. Sales.
CERTIFICATES: Grouped in frames on a wall. Kept in a file.
FREEDOM: children left home for uni; debts or mortgage paid; use made of redundancy money; retirement.
IMPROVEMENTS: New home, job, possessions; even rearranged furniture.
LANGUAGES: Courses bought. Courses started. Courses finished. Words learned. Country visited.
NOVELTY:books read; create activites such as poems written.
SKILLS: business; ecourses; exams taken and passed;
SPORTS: First bungee jump, marathon, parachute jump.
SOCIAL: Friends from overseas - on Facebook.
TRAVEL; countries visited; foods tried; friends and contacts; recipes used; souvenirs.

Keep Medical Records
List everything. Try to memorise the dates. Keep dates handy where you can access them in a hurry.

Tetanus
When did you have a tetanus jab? I scraped my leg in Cyprus getting out of a car which stopped - then accelerated towards a parking place. The hospital wanted to give me a tetanus jab but needed to know when I last had one.

Chicken Pox and Shingles
A relative developed shingles. It is a kind of late onset revival of dormant chicken pox which you may have had as a child, many years later when you are elderly and low or stressed. Are other relatives liable to catch it? Less likely if they have had chicken pox. What did I have and when? Measles, mumps, rubella? Keep records with your passport and in your diary and on your computer.

Most of the younger generation have had a vaccination against chicken pox. You can ask for a vaccination if you have not had chicken pox vaccine earlier.

Doctors
You need your medical record for all sorts of reasons. When you apply to register for a new doctor in a foreign country, they want your medical history.

When you go into hospital, walking into accident and emergency, or when admitted to a ward, they need to know your allergies.

Your family or colleagues fall ill - are you immune or have you had a vaccination?

Dentist
Visiting a dentist in Singapore, like in the USA, I had to list medications and allergies and give a long medical history.

I also needed a copy of my university graduation certificate from University College, London. The year, the date, the original certificate - or order a certified copy, at cost, and delay as it was available from the office only during university term time.

Job Applications
Applying for a job as a teacher in Singapore, I had to have a chest x-ray to prove I was free of TB and answer a whole list of questions.

Lists
What medication do you take (brand and generic name) ............................ (strength / dosage) .........
Pharmacy address,  hours, ........ tel .........................
Have you had chicken pox, measles, mumps, polio vaccine?
Genetic conditions, major illnesses or causes of death of grandparents or other ancestors, parents or siblings ..........................................................
Your vaccinations ..................................
Your home doctor name, address, tel .......................... ......................

Your passport number. ...............
Emergency number for ambulance in country you are visiting ...............................
Your travel insurance policy number ...................
Your travel insurance company name and phone number ...................................

You can find pharmacies, doctors and hospitals online and in hotel phone directories, or ask the hotel concierge, or look in the bedroom information folder. You can also ask the concierge of any hotel you pass, or the reception desk in an office building. The numbers of emergency services are often on the plaques at swimming pools and other places, or on notice boards and public vehicles.

Photograph numbers.

In the USA it may be cheaper to take a taxi than to call an ambulance if you have to pay for the private ambulance.

UK
In the UK ambulances are free but they will only come out for major emergencies such as road accidents unless called by a doctor.

You can phone the NHS emergency line in the UK. If the nurse thinks your condition is serious she will get a doctor to call you back.

While you are sitting waiting in a hospital waiting room, you might raise morale by thinking of all the successes in your life.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Update

Books by Angela Lansbury
How to be the best man. (Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Wedding Speeches and Toasts.(Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Unforgettable British Weekends.
Poetry Workshop Workbook.
The Tailor and the Spy. (Lulu.)
Larry The Talking Labrador. (Lulu.)
Writing Poetry for fun.

Quick Quotations

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