How to use Instagram to post photos of your holiday or event

I signed up for Instagram years ago but forgot how to use it.












Instagram has a help page.

Once you know, it looks simple. Look for the plus sign in the lower part of your screen to add a photo. Yes, plus, the same as adding a name to the contacts in an Android phone.

Why do I not see the plus sign? Maybe because I am not logged in.

I looked up Instagram in Wikipedia and found out that it is now (according to the Wiki article in July 2020) owned by Facebook.

I was able to update my profile page. It asked me for my website but allowed only one.

It is worthile thinking why you want an instagram page. If you have two or three different streams of interest, for example, promoting your books, selling clothes, showing off family photos, you might wish to have two or more Instagram sites. If they will not allow a second with the same email, and you get the message that this email is already in use, you may need to use a different email.

It is easy to creat a new email. But you have to keep checking all your emails. This is handy if you want to check your emails connected with work before family, or family before work.

Sometimes you can change your phone or laptop setting so that you see all emails. This is useful to be sure you don't lose anything vital to spam or social. I was losing my notification of messages to meetup which advertised my Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters meetings.

So, all your emails, websites and media pages tie in.  If you are into PR, you should be using Instagram. But, you may ponder, why use Instagram, which is all pictures? I am promoting events for which I don't yet have pictures, and writing blogs, using other people's pictures.

You can make a poster to promote your upcoming event using photos of your main speakers. You can put a photo of your speakers on Instagram. But what if the photos are poor quality/ What about a photo of yourself?

Instagram has many uses.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-post-on-instagram

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

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting the first Wednesday of the month, Usually on Zoom. But the other Wednesdays have workshops on app learncool.sg

Incoming president Faith from Wed July 15th 2020 change dates and platforms so please contact the club.

Latest is only two meetings each month.

For meetings learncool it is quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites On Speaking and Languages

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
translate.google.com
duolingo.com

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/vi/en/Learn-Vietnamese

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

Other Useful Posts By Angela Lansbury Author

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html 

Please share links to your favourite posts

The Wrong Name On Your Air Ticket Or hotel reservation

Does your name get mis-spelled? Does your post (mail) go missing.

THE USA AND UK
After I returned to the UK from the USA, friends and businesses sent me mail addressed to London. They did not specify the UK. Some of my post was sent to London in Canada. I received invitation to events long past, 6 months later when I was in the UK.



Back in the UK the street names caused confusion.


I used to live in Hillview Rise. I received mail addressed to Hillview Ride and Millview Road.

Family Names
What about family names? I get Lansberry and Landsbury and Landsberry.

For Sharot I get Sharon and Sharrow.

First Names
And first names? For Angela I get Anglia and Angel.

At school I was called Hazel Nut and I dropped Hazel when I left school.

But now everybody insists on your correct name. When the dentist shouts Hazel it takes half a minute before I realised they are calling me.

That was just the problems I encountered in the UK.

I remember several occasions when I was told the hotel did not have my reservation or airline booking.

EUROPE - France
France The first time was years ago in Lille in France. Four of us arrived at a hotel in Lille. We arrived by car from the UK, hoping to check into our rooms, shower and change into smart clothes, and drive across town to a reception held by the tourist board.

The hotel had no reservation for any of our four names. We tried calling the French tourist board office. We got an answering machine message in French. I eventually managed to translate, with the help of the receptionist, that the office was closed for an event and they would return next week.

I asked (in French), do you have a vacant room, where we can leave our bags and use a shower and change our clothes. Look, Our reservation says we have rooms here.

The girl on reception said they were fully booked. But somebody had not yet turned up. I asked, how far are they travelling from? We got the last ferry. Maybe they are not coming. Who booked those rooms.

She told us, the rooms are booked by the French tourist board.

I gasped, "Those bookings must be for us!' Four rooms and four of us. They have booked in their name instead of ours."

She still seemed doubtful.

We showed her that we were going to an evening dinner organized by the French Tourist board. If the rooms were for anybody else, we would either swap rooms or go to the other hotel.

Now I know when rooms are booked for me by anybody else, to ask for the name of the person doing the booking, and to have a letter saying the name of the person booking and the name of the person occupying the room. Plus of course the phone number out of hours to contact if there is any problem with the hotel booking, or we are delayed on our travels and need to cancel the room.

ASIA
In Asia the family name comes first, followed by the two personal names. Common family names include Lee and Lim. So minister Lee Kuan Yew, the family name is Lee. You say the three one-syllable names together, as if it were written Lee-kuan-yew or Lee, Kuan-yew. think of the way in an old English boarding school a boy would be called Smith rather than John, and taking the class register the master would call two brothers: Smith, John or to match the three syllables used in Chinese, Smith, Johnny, and Smith, Peter.

As a result, in Asia, a Western woman whose name is Andrea, and whose husband is John Smith, might find herself address as Mrs John. That is at first disconcerting, later amusing. However, it can lead to confusion when it comes to hotel reservations and air tickets.

We have several time been told that we don't have any booking in our name for a restaurant or attraction, or a hotel or air ticket. If this happens to you, ask to see the list. If they will not permit this, because they are suspicious of your intentions, or afraid of violating data protection, try to read the list upside down.

Or ask them to look for both your first name and last name separately. A change in spelling can make things worse. It helps if you know which date and time you made the booking. For example, John Smith may make a restaurant booking, but there is nothing under Smith. Nothing under John either.

However, looking at the list, you see a booking for two people, made by a Mr Smith Joan. This might be the answer to the problem, especially of Joan has not arrived and has the same phone number as John Smith.

Useful Websites
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com

About the author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker

Small Moves? From a parcel to a washing machine, who can help?

Problem
How do I move just a few small item, or one item?

Answer
A tiny item can go with me in a taxi. A larger item can be posted by the mail service, or a collection service which arrives with a large envelope. For a one way trip, I need 'a man with a van'. For a bigger item, it's a two-man job which costs more.

For something you are selling, try 'collect only' on ebay. Put your area in the headline if allowed.

You can also hire escort delivery services, people who are driving across the USA and will take your goods with them.

https://www.anyvan.com/av/low-cost-man-with-van?
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/mail/uk-guaranteed
https://www.parcelforce.com/worldwide-directory/usa
https://www.ups.com/ship?loc=en_GB#/step1
https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/transporting-a-washing-machine/
https://blog.upack.com/posts/moving-a-washer
http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/support/skp/faq/1094898 
(transporting a cwashing machine info on bolts to keep drum fixed and warning to keep machine upright

Author
Angela Lansbury

Saving Breakfast and Other Recipes For Holidays And For Students And Second Homes

Problems Of Lost Recipes
1
Mother's Recipe Book
After my mother died I wished I had had her recipes.

2
Granny's Recipes Never Written down
I never had the recipe for my paternal grandma's crispy biscuits. She would not have needed to write it down. She would have had a standard recipe When I was a child and a teenager I visited her every Sunday afternoon and the biscuits were always the same.

Answers
A
Many months after mother died, at the back of the kitchen utility cupboard, I found a battered old recipe book (the classic Florence Greenberg). Old newspaper cuttings of recipes were folded inside the back cover. On the notes pages and flyleaf were recipes written out by hand by my mother, spidery almost Italic writing. She had compiled the recipes for herself, not for me. However, it was very useful and nostalgic for me.\

To be sure I could find mother's book in a hurry, and to ensure the book was not thrown out or given away by my family after I died, I pasted a photo of my mother on the cover.

Angela's Mother Netta's Recipe book. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

B
Classic Biscuit Recipe
When I described my granny's 'crispy biscuits' to a friend, Gene, at a book group, she said that like British scones, crispy biscuits were a staple of Poland or Eastern Europe. Therefore I could probably find two or three recipes online.

Biscuit Oven Temperature
The recipe must suit my oven temperature and type. I have a fan assisted oven.

Biscuit Texture

My friend, Gene, pointed out that I would have to try them out until I found one which was right. I could adapt it to the right crispiness and brittleness to suit myself.

What texture would suit me now? I don't like chewy biscuits because I think they pull out fillings. Crispy items which don't melt annoy me because they stick in my teeth. A biscuit which is crisp at first bite, yet melts in the mouth would be right.

Biscuit Ingredients
I imagine the biscuits would be made with butter, not margarine. Being poor, my maternal granny would have bought food at the market, not in a shop. (Aside. I remember eating waxy chocolate, which my paternal grandparents bought in the market. I now know how the recipe would have been different from the milk-based chocolate I was used to, made by Cadbury's.) However, I imagine her recipe would probably be from her mother or mother-in-law and pre-date margarine.

Saving Your Recipes
The question now arises, how to save the recipes from the major cook in your family. In our case, it is my husband who cooks. When he is in one country and I am in another, how can I reproduce the recipes and pass them on to our son, and our yet unborn grandchildren?

Compiling A Family Recipe Book
I have asked my husband to collect together his recipes and make them into a book for me for my birthday and for our son for his birthday. This involves collecting together all the recipes. Add a photo of the family eating, or my husband at the stove or oven cooking (on the front cover), and bringing the food to the table (back cover).

He has agreed, but he agreed last year. He was too busy writing a technical book requiring research. It never happened.

Making Notes
The answer is for me to do it. If he hasn't time, I must ask him questions and surreptitiously make notes. I shall do it the way I wrote my mother-in-law's life story for her 90th birthday.

For a year in advance, each time we met for Sunday lunch or dinner, or Saturday night or Friday night dinner, I would ask her a question. I would dash to the toilet and write up her answer on a piece of paper. Later, at home, I stapled the notes into my diary. If possible, within 24 hours, I wrote my notes out neatly. Then, within a week, I typed them up. When my diary got too full, the written recordings went into a notebook. (You could also do a video recording each week of your granny, grandad, mother or father cooking.

Alternative, a son or daughter or student grandchild can show a widowed grandparent how to cook simple meals. Wouldn't you think anybody can cook a boiled egg or a piece of fish in a microwave oven?

Who Needs Your Help?
My stay at home mother had done all the cooking for my father, her working husband. After she died, aged 89, my retired father, also aged 89, kept phoning me asking how to cook.
'How do you boil a soft-boiled egg? The first time I did it in a saucepan with water and got a hard-boiled egg. The second time I put it in the microwave and it exploded and made a mess."
"How do I cook a piece of fish in a microwave oven?"

You might not yet know who is going to need your family recipes. By the time you discover that a widow or a student grandchild wants a recipe, it might be too late. Your parent or spouse or friend may have moved away to a different time zone or passed away.

Collecting Spoken Records
I shall do the same surreptitious collecting as I did for my mother-in-law with my husband's recipes.
Today I got the home made Museli-style breakfast fruit, nuts and cereal recipe.

My husband said:
(Answering, 'What are the ingredients?) "The ingredients are porrige oats, apples, sultanas and milk. (I asked, "How do you make it?) The night before you take porridge oats, 25 grams, the same as you would cook in the morning, not 25 grams each, 25 grams for two. Add in two good (heaped) spoons (dessert spoons) of grated apple. Then sultanas. Finally, some milk. Leave overnight in the fridge.

Hot or Cold Breakfast?
A soaked oats breakfast takes time to prepare the night before. However, it saves time and energy in the morning.

Slow Mornings and Quick Starts
Good for night owls. Good for both slow and quick starts. Good for a lazy start, no work making breakfast. Also good for a quick departure - if you are self-catering on holiday and need to rush off for a coach tour or day out.

You are using porridge oats, but unlike porridge, no need to heat it up. (Good for summer, or hot countries such as Singapore, maybe in Florida or the south.) Good when you are happy to eat a cold breakfast, and don't want cooking making your hot kitchen even hotter.

Mixed Fruit Breakfast
This is a filling breakfast we devised with fresh fruit as a recovery diet after cancer when with a compromised immune system we could not risk meat products and preservatives. No more bacon and eggs nor full English breakfast with sausages at home nor at hotels.

Fruit and Cereal and Yogurt Breakfast
Chop bite size pieces of apple. Add small segments of orange fruit such as madarines or s , two prunes (plate on one side for the stones), apple chopped into bite size slices or cubes. Add yogurt. Sprinkle on top small nuts such as almonds, flaked almonds, broken walnuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts. On weekends or when you have time, or failing all else, halved fresh brazil nuts (time and mess from breaking them open).

I add milk as well as yogurt, for extra water, extra calcium, and teeth whitening after prunes.

Nuts or Not Nuts?
Obviously, but worth a reminder, you leave out nuts if anybody is allergic to nuts. So if you don't know your house guests, leave off the nuts until you have checked they are not allergic to nuts.

Cereal or Porridge
Either add half a piece of Weetabix or follow with a plate of heated up (in a saucpan) salted porridge with milk. (We add an 'unhealthy' teaspoon of maple syrup.) You could add

Mail Recipes
If you have a child such as one at boarding school or university, or at home when you are away on business, or living as an ex-pat, and your offspring who likes to receive recipes, or whatever you send, you could email a recipe every week. At the end of the year make a collection.

Time For Compiling, Proof-reading, Printing, Posting twice
 Allow time to sort out the book structure and cover and for the book to be mailed back. Also, allow time for the proof-reading. If the book has a mistake, such as a blank page in the middle, you might keep that copy for yourself as a spare and send off for another correct copy as a gift.

So you should start compiling a month earlier for a birthday or anniversary, two months earlier for Christmas, especially if you have Christmas recipes to use at Christmas time, or want the gift in time for Christmas and not delayed in the post arriving just in time for New Year!

If the book is posted to you, then posted by you to the recipient, or recipients, that is another double postage time. As they say about vines and trees, "The time to plant a vine/tree is twenty years ago. If that's not possible, start today."

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

Should you and I update posts?

Problem
You find more material to add to a post. Do you update your old post or write a new one?

Answer
I just updated my post on a website adding with the words UPDATE that a restaurant (B and K) which had a one star rating now had a five star rating (the top number for hygiene etc) because it would be unfair to them if somebody saw the previous post and did not know about the later one.

You can't update every post. There isn't time. You may forget - unless you do a search of your own blog. You might want to do an end of the year update, places closed down, new places, change of ratings. I think you should add an update at the end of an old post if you can find it and have the time in these circumstances:

To protect the people mentioned in a post, their associated businesses, customers, families and friends, but also to help your readers, I or you may wish to update or delete a post if:

1 A restaurant rating goes up or down in either Michelin or hygiene.
2 If a restaurant closes down. If it moves. If the menu has changed.
3 If somebody dies.
4 A person convicted of a crime wins an appeal or the circumstances are disputed or the sentence has been spent and you (are legally or morally obliged to no longer mention it) but you cannot delete the old post.

I often go back to add an address or website to a post. If that's all, I might add an update to everybody to share that I have added some websites. To send out a share and make them read again the next day is annoying, so I try to add more than one website. I find I am typing a whole new paragraph, I copy it and cut it and write a new post.

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

Making your travel blog with a MacBook - photo problems solved

My copmuter systems are not shaking hands.

I write an amusing travel post for you and go to load up the essential picture, the photo of the food at the restaurant I'm reviewing, or the travel suitcase. A picture is worth a thousand words. But I can't load up the picture. I thought it was because I did not know how to do it. Or the internet was slow. No. I and you and others have had the same problem.

You may have had trouble loading up your photos if you have a new MacBook or have installed new software on an old machine. In the good old days, you were probably able to move photos instantly simply by clicking on the little icon above your draft post, the one with the cute picture of the blue sky, then clicking on pictures, but wherever you search, no photos appear, just a blank screen.

I had moved from Blogger to Wordpress but it didn't help. That's because the new software and your Blog post on either Blogger or Wordpress won't talk to each other. If you go onto the forums you will find that you are not the only person with this problem.

The solution seems to be to move your photos out of the new photo system (with the rainbow petals on a schematic daisy) onto your desktop. Then move them across. From the computer using customer's point of view that's a time consuming, backward step. You have paid a lot of money to install what you thought would be a new system and instead you are worse off than when you were on the old system.

From the point of view of the paying customer, it's time Apple and Blogger and Google and the big boys, and girls, got together. It's no good pretending that it's not our company, not our fault, not our problem.

If you are running a tourists industry, (and a computer is a kind of tourist industry), you want to ferry people from one country to another. It's no good creating a wonderful plane or ferry service when the foreign country won't let anybody from your country land. You advertise your wonderful modern ship. But it can't get into the ports where your customers used to go on holiday.

You land them on a remote island, with no sight of the destination, and no guidance how to get there. (And you have charged them a lot of money.) Some of them will try to get back on the overcrowded sinking little boat (the old laptop with iPhoto, which keeps sinking under the weight or volume of pictures and data.)

Others will shout out you. But nobody seems to be listening. If the makers of the grand cruise ship, admittedly a beautiful ship, although it won't take you to your destination. won't listen, or at least don't admit that they have heard or intend to do anything, what's left for the customers to do.

Get together. Post information. (As I am here.)

Hope that the go it alone experts will come to everybody's aid. Appeal to them. As I am now. Go and work for Apple, Google, Blogger, Wordpress, and solve the problem. If you are in marketing, persuaded your boss that you should contact the other company and do a deal which will benefit both of you.

What if you've tried to get a job with 'the big boys' and failed. Or you are far away from their office, or in another country. You don't have a great cv. Or you prefer to work from home. But you are smart. You think you can solve the problem.

Do us all a favour. Tell us the solution. If you like, if you care more about fame than money, or think fame will lead to fortune, add your name to it. The Fred photo fix. The Smith software solution. The Ali apple answer. The Lim longterm solution.

All those computer geeks who are spending their time doing damage to big companies instead could be doing everybody a favour and and instead of being hidden villains in danger of going to prison they could become popular heroes with the chance of being famous and respected by finding us solutions. Get our photos back up on our travel blog posts. Fast. Thank you.

Then you will have the pleasure of seeing a great picture on my blog posts every day, not just at the end of the day or week, when I've had time to do things the long way round. Yes, I'll come back later and add a photo - if I've got time.

Can you help? Can you spread the word? Can you like this post or forward it? Please do so.

Angela Lansbury B A Honours, travel writer, blogger, author, speaker.