I'm a full-time mummy

My brother in-law travels often and every now and then will be sharing his experiences good and bad. In this article, I'll be sharing his personal security tips while traveling abroad. He has given his blessings for me to copy his tips and share his article out, I'm only touching up a wee bit of typo and using freestock pictures, otherwise I'm crediting this article to his name.

Let's read and learn together, shall we?

Take just enough cash for the day spending

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In Spain, we pre-researched that we might need EUR30 per day per person for lunch, refreshment, dinner, shopping & admission fees. So I took 3 notes of 10 EUR, and separated them into 2-3 pockets (pants, shirt) and only 1 credit card. No wallet, No handbag, No carrybag, No belt punch. I only have a compact knapsack to store water, snacks, a woollen jumper, mobile phone, and medicine. The rest of the holiday cash and passports are in the hotel room safe or hotel main safety box.

Watch for people watching you – scan your surroundings

Generally, in developed countries, the locals do not have a habit of staring or looking at you, it is impolite – even if you are dressed outrageously. Whenever we are descending into a train station or bus station, we scan the surroundings – to see who is looking at us.

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In Barcelona (we pre-learned) how to recognise professional pick pockets – they are usually the ones looking at other people and their belongings; they don’t seemed to be waiting for trains or looking at the train notice board, and they ain’t reading anything – not even their mobile phone (this is a dead give-away). We saw a few – and we avoided them. In Barcelona, a pickpocket if caught is not charged unless you can prove that they stole more than EUR 300.

What if the hotel is budget type and storing in room doesn’t feel safe

We put all cash, cards and passports into a thick envelop, close it, doing these inside our room before going down to the counter. And at the counter, we store it into the hotel counter safety box - each box usually have a dual-key system. We do not give our things to the person on the counter to keep it into the box – we do it together in our presence.

What if the hotel is so budget that even the room safety box or counter safety box looks iffy

First, not worth to stay in such a hotel. Secondly, paying slightly more is for some measure of security. But in the event you don’t have choices, and you must take your valuables out with you on your body, make sure the (example of) 30 EUR (3 notes in 3 pockets); the rest, tightly packed into the deepest section of your knapsack firmly against your body.

Knapsack, Knapsack, Knapsack – just 1

Knapsack, Knapsack, Knapsack – and hug it in your front

Buy a very inconspicous uncomplicated boring but firm knapsack, with 2-3 deep sections preferably with inner zip. And always all the time, especially in crowded areas, specifically: airports, train stations, taxi & bus stations, lifts, elevators, street markets, inside trains & buses – HUG your knapsack in the FRONT of your body.

Honeymooning couples are usually bodily glued to each other everywhere they go, with knapsacks behind them, and bags all over the place – they are a thief and pickpocket heaven on earth. We do not carry more than 1 bag per body (maybe, max max 2 – 1 roller suitecase, 1 knapsack – for long holidays.)

If you’re carrying a knapsack, handbag, iPad, shopping bags, camera bag, waist pouch, pants wallet – you stand out like a "Come-Rob-Me-Please" beacon begging them. Robbing just you would help meet the thieves’ daily quota, or even weekly.

Do NOT count on numbers

Just because you are surrounded by family members, friends, colleagues, male members of the travelling entourage – Number is NOT safety. Do not count on others to watch your valuables. In 2 separate incidences, a male colleague was in the check-out queue of a 5 star hotel with other male colleagues, and the cctv later picked up a well-suit bespectabled bearded man casually walked up along him and lifted his notebook bag – with all the whole week site reports in there (!). A neighbour lost her notebook in a spanking new airport which she had transited so many times, this time surrounded by her family members.

Number is not safety.

It is like a stalking tiger deciding which gazelle it wants to pounce upon out of the many grazing gazelles mistaking security in numbers.

Jewelleries, Handbags, Wallets, Watches, Necklaces

Whenever I’m the group leader, I conditioned that all members must leave all burdensome & valuables things at home – we don’t need them to impress people or travelling companions to the places we’re heading. Specifically : branded handbags (or all handbags in general), all jewelleries (from every bodyparts except those already nailed onto the body) with exception of one’s wedding ring (of which the wife would be very unhappy not to see it on her husband’s finger) – on the otherhand, tai tai should abandon their 36 carats diamond ring at home – and no need to bring along to impress. You'll always end up paying more to the very people you’re trying to impress.

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Try driving a Mercedes to the durian seller – you’ll be charged more. And men, expensive watches – leave it at home. Needless to say, necklace is so easy to grab. I once was waiting at a traffic light, on a bright sunny day, I saw something shiny flew across my windscreen ... it's so surreal like slow-mo movie... it fell on the road kerb, the owner a toughie ganster looking type picked up his thick gleaming gold chain ..and started to chase the 2 motorcycled snatch thieves.

Things You Can Leave at Home

Driving licence (unless you will be renting a car) and National Identity Card. Your passport** and visa are the only document you’ll need – for entry at Customs, hotel, car rental, etc. Pants wallet especially those bulging with cards and cash makes pick pocketers glee with joy and praising their patron god. So, I seldom use or keep valuables in a pant-wallet.

**before the trip, we photocopy all our passports, and credit cards .. and leave the photocopy inside our hotel safe in case anyone loses their passport or card - and we hv this copy to refer or make report.

Remember, when travelling in groups – especially if everyone are close friends or family members : if one member exposed themselves to be robbed and pickpocketed, or lose their travelling document or money – it clouds the entire holiday mood for everyone (remember my own Brussels-London trip?) So, in taking precautions and freeing ourselves from being robbed – we are actually preserving the happy mood of travelling together.

Go light, go easy, go safe.

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you all. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here. You can click on the image below to launch the video on YouTube:

The geniuses over at MACMA are getting a slow clap from the Internet this week after outsmarting all of those pesky social media rules that prohibit nudity. And it’s all in the name of a good cause.

 If you haven’t heard of it, MACMA is an Argentinian-based breast cancer charity, devoted to spreading awareness and knowledge to women about how important it is to regularly screen for lumps in their breast tissue. According to Little Black Book, MACMA recently hired a company called David to help them come up with a clever way to reach even more women across the globe.

As David’s General Creative Director, Joaquin Cubria, and VP, Ignacio Ferioli, told LBB: “It’s hard to get women over 25 to examine their breasts regularly to prevent breast cancer. But it isn’t hard to make them check their phones every five minutes. Therefore, we decided to get to them [on social media].”

The only problem? Accurately showing women how to check for lumps means … showing women how to check for lumps. Like, on boobs. Real ones.

Unfortunately, videos or images featuring any hint of nudity — including breasts — are blocked from Facebook and Instagram. (Yes, even those that are breastfeeding-related, and completely non-sexual.) Quite the conundrum.

All I can say, though, is thank god for man boobs. And this guy, whose name is allegedly Henry:

“Henry” graciously lend his man boobs to the good people at David and MACMA, and soon enough, they had themselves an informative (and hilarious) video that reminds women not only to check themselves regularly, but more importantly how to do it. The campaign, appropriately named #ManBoobs4Boobs, is getting a lot of play on Twitter, where many are praising the use of “moobs” — and not in a body-shaming way.

According to the World Cancer Research Fund International, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer to affect women. In fact, as of 2012, an estimated 1.7 million women worldwide had been diagnosed. Considering those staggering stats, MACMA’s ad is all the more brilliant, for the way it manages to be both helpful and hilarious, all at once.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I am crappy at planning things to teach to our kiddos way in advance. I usually just browsed through the workbooks softcopies on my laptop and see what interests me at that point and then print out the worksheets related to the topics or googled for the worksheets online. So happened that the topic I decided to teach our kiddos is PLANT.

At first I thought, I have to teach both of them together. Even though their age gap differs (4.5 and 7, I left our 2.5 years old girl play with her toys happily) I told myself I have to make it works for both our older kiddos. By hook or by crook I'm not going to repeat this topic again and again lol.

So I got our kiddos to sit on the floor facing the whiteboard while I started gathering up my thoughts on how I should approach this topic so that they both can understand at their respective ages. Yes, I think my brains works very well under pressure and critical time limit lol.

I started with explaining to them what is a plant. It is a living thing, just like the animals and us humans. It 'eats', 'drinks', breathe and grows just like any other living thing. Then I drew some examples of plants such as grass, plants with flowers and a tree.

I proceeded to explain to them the parts of the plants. Roots, stems, leaves, flowers, trunk, branches etc. What each parts does to the plant. I compared my body to the plants with flowers and also to the tree.

Pretending that I'm a plant with flowers, I asked them where should my roots be and waited for our kiddos to point to my feet. I repeated the similar questions for leaves and flowers and stem. And moved on to pretending I'm a tree and repeated the same questions, where should my roots, branches, trunk etc be if I am a tree.

After the explanation, I proceeded to hand them 2 worksheets related to the topic I have just explained. Now, our 4.5 years old girl is not reading anything yet but she can do her copywork decently, meaning if you give her any words and asked her to copy out the word, she can do it no problem. I didn't need to explain what to do to our 7 years old boy since he can read the instructions, so I focused on our 4.5 years old girl.

I read out the name of the parts of the plant and asked her where should the parts be. Once she pointed to the right part, I told her to copy out the respective words next to the part. She did so diligently and patiently. At the same time she practises her copywork and writing skills, I also get to observe her understanding of the lesson I just taught them. Whether she captures what I said and remembered anything.

(** Left by our 4.5 years old girl, right by our 7 years old boy)

I repeated the same method with the second worksheet. But this time, instead of her writing down the answers, I told her 'This word is circle means 'roots', now draw a line to match to where the roots are.' She happily matches the line to the parts and completed both worksheets. 

(** Left by our 4.5 years old girl, right by our 7 years old boy)

I'm loving moments like this where both kiddos can learn together!

Win-win!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.